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This volume of Architecture Philosophy derives 
from the 4th biennial conference of the International 
Society for the Philosophy of Architecture held for 
two days at the United States Air Force Academy 
in Colorado Springs, Colorado in July, 2018. The 
conference theme “Building as Service: People, 
Politics, and Governance,” and the three keynote 
speakers, attracted a wide variety of papers including 
presentations on state architecture, representations 
of power, and symbols of politics from 30 additional 
presenters. The papers also ranged geographically: 
case studies from architecture in Nazi Germany to 
informal cities in South America were presented.
 One of the chief attractions for conferees 
was the opportunity to explore the grounds of 
U.S. Air Force Academy: itself one of the 20th 
century’s distinguished achievements in state 
architecture. The Academy is notable for coherence 
and completeness as an exemplar of International 
Modernist style. Its lead architect, Walter Netsch, 
and his firm Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, were 
at the forefront of this movement. Netsch’s vision 
was built almost entirely as he intended and it was 
finished in less than 10 years: the Academy was 
created on April 1, 1954 and the last building of 
the initial plan; the celebrated Academy Chapel, 
was completed in 1962. Amazingly, the Academy 
still functions largely in accordance with its original 
design plan, thus Netsch’s vision, together with 
the Air Force’s intent for the campus, continues 
to inform the life of the institution today—some 

Modernism, 
theyargue, 

poses special 
challenges to 

accepted historic 
preservation 

values

“

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editorial:  BUIlDING as service

Mark Jensen & tom spector 



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60 years later. In addition to exploring the buildings themselves, visitors 
observed the ways in which cadets, faculty, and other personnel pursue 
their institutional objectives in concert with the supporting architecture. 
Conferees were treated with a tour of the campus led by the Air Force 
Academy’s resident architect, Duane Boyle, who knew Netsch personally 
(Netsch died in 2008) and who shared details of both the architect’s 
thinking and intent in designing the campus.
 The conference was convened in the newest addition to the Air 
Force Academy, Polaris Hall which opened in 2016, also designed, like the 
rest of the main campus, by SOM. Polaris Hall houses both the Academy’s 
Center for Character and Leadership Development and serves as a 
conference center just outside the secure boundaries of the “cadet area,” 
where cadets live and learn and train. Its signature element is its skylight 
tower, which telescopes toward the pole star. The conference opened with 
a keynote from one of Polaris Hall’s lead architects, Frank Mahan, whose 
contribution, fittingly, opens this volume of Architecture Philosophy.
 In their piece, “The Future of Modernism,” Frank Mahan and 
collaborator Van Kluytenaar discuss the architectural challenge of restoration 
in the context of restoring modernist buildings. Modernism, they argue, 
poses special challenges to accepted historic preservation values according 
primacy to a building’s “literal materiality,” first theorized by Ruskin 
and Morris, when a modern building is more driven by the “fathomless 
depths of its concept,” better served by the idealistic preservation values 
of Viollet-le-duc. Drawing on the resources of Merleau-Ponty, they argue 
that plans for restoration and reuse must be recognizably continuous with 
the narrative behind the building or else risk losing important, albeit less 
material, qualities that make the building what it is. They illustrate this 
theory with a discussion of three case studies: Lever House, Manufacturers 
Hanover Trust, and Polaris Hall itself. It will not be lost on conference 
participants that these exact issues are at stake in the restoration of Cadet 
Chapel. 
 In his piece, “Design-Politics: How Buildings Mean,” the 
conference’s final keynote Lawrence Vale develops a set of distinctions first 
proposed by Nelson Goodman to examine the gap between what a building 
means and how it communicates its meaning to its audience. Through a 
series of case studies, Vale undercuts the possibility of a simple relationship 
between the meaning of a building and what it communicates. He points 
out that notable historic events, digital media, and temporary installations 
add layers to what it communicates that are not directly mappable to the 
meaning of the building itself. This recognition leads him to conclude 
that contemporary design cannot hope to slide underneath the political 



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dimensions of life: public buildings are not just 
neutral backdrops for political contests but actually 
part of the contests themselves.
 In the next essay in this volume, “Koolhaas’ 
Revision of Foucault’s Panopticon,” André Patrão 
explores the relationship between the disciplines 
of architecture and philosophy through Koolhaas’ 
apparent, yet denied, appropriation of Foucault’s 
philosophy in his proposal for a renovated 
panopticon prison. The panopticon, originally 
designed by Jeremy Bentham, is a prison in which 
the cells are arranged around a central guardhouse 
such that the prisoners are always under the 
impression that they are being watched, even 
though the guards themselves are unobserved, 
e.g., by means of one-way glass. Foucault uses the 
panopticon as a metaphor for the destructive power 
of the feeling of constant surveillance. Koolhaas, 
on the other hand, is faced with a real opportunity 
to renovate an actual panopticon prison. He 
proposes to eliminate the central guard tower and 
makes other changes that will contribute to the 
humanization of the prisoners inside. It would 
seem that Foucault must have had an influence on 
Koolhaas, but as Patrão argues, the genealogy is not 
straightforward. Foucault is never mentioned by 
Koolhaas in connection with the proposal and yet 
its aims are consistent with a serious appreciation 
of Foucault’s widely disseminated critique. Patrão 
employs this case to examine the question: Can we, 
should we, to what degree and for what end assert 
intellectual influence when ideas are “in the air”?
 Rick Fox’s “Useless Speculation: 
Architectural Obsolescence and the Micro-Parcels of 
Gordon Matta-Clark’s Fake Estates,” uses the work 
of artist Gordon Matta-Clark to draw attention 
to the situatedness of buildings inside a public 
geography that may be marked by disorganization, 
confusion, and incoherence. In the 1970s, Matta-
Clark acquired 15 very small parcels of land in New 
York City at public auction. That these parcels even 

      Vale 
undercuts 

the possibility 
of a simple 

relationship 
between the 
meaning of a 

building and what 
it communicates

“

”



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existed was an indication of errors in surveying, zone, and land contracts. 
Some of these parcels were completely surrounded by private property and 
hence inaccessible to the owner without the permission of an adjacent 
property owner. While Matta-Clark never constructed an art installation 
around his land parcels, Fox reconstructs the underlying critical perspective 
Fake Estates intended to make about the waste and obsolescence endemic 
to contemporary architecture and city planning.
 In our final essay, “Constructing a Common World: Architectural 
Craftsmanship and Public Responsibility,” Hans Teerds reconfigures 
Hannah Arendt’s distinction between work and action for the architectural 
enterprise. For Arendt, work is the act of building something; action is 
civic and political engagement. Yet contemporary trends in architectural 
production towards the seeming objectivity provided by machines and 
algorythms tend to place the architect at an increasing remove from both. 
True engagement, he contends, must be found in subjectivity. While 
work is the natural home for architectural activity, Teerds argues that 
architects must be attentive to action as well, insofar as action takes place 
in the context of the buildings that architects design. Drawing upon the 
phenomenological tradition, Teerds describes the interplay between the 
design and craftsmanship of the architect in the world of work and the 
contested and deliberative environment of action. Architects today must 
design and construct in partnership with their clients and stakeholders—a 
community that, in the world of action, may not be coherent. In this way, 
the judgment and work of the architect today is inescapably political.
Our volume concludes with a review by Mark Jensen of Timothy Hyde’s 
new book, Ugliness and Judgment: On Architecture in the Public Eye. Hyde’s 
book provides both a delightful and frustrating tour through hundreds of 
years of British architecture, city planning, and the public and political 
responses to the series of poor design choices and ugly buildings that these 
architects and planners have produced. Unfortunately for the philosophical 
reader, Hyde does not supply an analysis of ugliness that might be of use 
to architects and planners alike in order to avoid despoiling the urban 
landscape.
 We hope that, in this volume of Architecture Philosophy, you will 
find the variety, nuance, novelty, and interest that we have all come to expect 
at the intersection of architecture, design, philosophy, and politics. The 
next biennial conference of the International Society for the Philosophy of 
Architecture will be held in Monte Verita Switzerland. We hope to see you 
there!



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AIR FORCE ACADEMY 
CADET CHAPEL, 2018



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