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Those of us who had given up on talk of essences, 
because they always seem to depend on some 
inaccessible, mystifying core, are in for a pleasant 
reawakening. Essence(s) is(are) back. In retrospect, 
this turn was inevitable. Continential philosophy’s  
militant perspectivalism, starting with Nietzsche, 
was bound to invite a backlash. Meanwhile, an 
influential cohort of architects has become frustrated 
“that architecture is increasingly justified solely 
by its relations and not by its own particular and 
autonomous qualities.”1 That is to say, to the degree 
that architecture is justified by its performance, 
it recedes into the background as a mere tool, as 
‘equipment’ in Heideggerian terms, and it loses its 
potential as a foreground element in the process. 
     Concerns for architecture’s autonomy 
usually emanate from economic recessions, but, 
interestingly, not this time. Times are good in the 
profession, architects have plenty of work, and yet 
their ambitions for their work are still frustrated.   
This suggests that something else is afoot. That 
something else may be the sheer oppressive weight 
of performance expectations these days: climate, 
social betterment, profit motives, work productivity, 
context, and more besides that coalesce to crowd out 
conceptions of what architecture can be by those of 
what it facilitates. Those pushing the performative 
aspects of architecture think that giving up a little 
autonomy for a lot more relevance is well worth the 
trade. But it is a question of degree.
       Thus, architecture and philosophy have found 

editorial:  Essence and architecture

tom spector 



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new common ground. Each author in this volume approaches the topic 
of essence uniquely in order to demystify what they see as a thoroughly 
useful concept.
 The opening essay, Benjamin Bross’s Essentialism and Spatial (Re)
Production, argues that the essence of space and place does not have to 
be approached holistically but can be usefully analyzed into component 
parts without losing the overall in the process. So, for example, a door: It’s 
formal properties are an obvious source of its essence. But also, What is its 
final cause--what was it brought into the world to do? What is its efficient 
cause--who creates it and how do they do this? And what are its temporal 
properties both in its production and its use over time? Taken together, 
he thinks, these properties tell us the door’s essence in a way that becomes 
normative. That is, they help us tell a good one from a bad one. 
 Clearly, Bross is attempting an essentialism  quite different from 
the one the Pragmatist tradition  sought so strenuosly to put to bed. 
Pragmists disliked essences because they seemed to presume a metaphysics 
of objects beyond all human  intentions that in turn required a complicated 
epistemology merely to explain how we come to know of these essences. 
Bross’s project is perhaps better thought of as determining an object’s 
functional essence—a much more tractable problem. His ultimate purpose 
is to identify the “essential parts (that) can contribute to the continuation 
and innovation of spatial production.”
 In Ashley Woodward’s explanation of Jean-François Lyotard’s 
thoughts about architecture, it is the keenly felt absence of what at one 
time, and in a more hospitable context, were the essential boundaries of 
domesticity and of the town that drive his thinking about architecture. In 
the face of an example such as Southern California, Woodward explains, 
Lyotard is dismayed that “Space is no longer between a ‘here’ (home) 
and ‘elsewhere’ – the border zone seems to have expanded indefinitely, 
such that ‘there is nothing left but surroundings.’” Dismayed, and yet 
simultaneously (and so typically Lyotardian) he is suspicious that nostalgia 
for those idealized enclosures may lead to violence against perceived others. 
Certainly, recent refugee crises at the U. S. Border with Mexico and across 
Europe testify to the reality of such suspicions. Since idealizations of cities 
are inherently suspicious in his view, architects should eschew projects that 
trade in such wishful thinking in favor of “non-projects” born out of an 
attitude of non-domination over others.
 In case Object Oriented Ontology (OOO), as promoted by 
Graham Harman and others, has passed underneath the reader’s attention, 
the conversation here transcribed between Harman and Simon Weir will 



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serve as a good introduction to the thought of SCI-
Arc’s Distinguished Professor of Philosophy (and 
more recently, the school’s Liberal Arts Coordinator.) 
Among the tenets of OOO is that objects have 
qualities, but they cannot be reduced to their 
changeable qualities, hence they have an essence. 
Humans are also objects--a realization that should 
lead to collapse of the subject-object distinction 
and towards a de-anthropocentric outlook. Harman 
recognizes the roots of these ideas in Aristotle, but 
also that he departs from Aristotle. “I emphasize 
the inaccessible elusiveness of real objects, and 
while Aristotle has more awareness of that than 
many people realize, he does not emphasize the gap 
between the mind and the object to the same extent 
that OOO does (coming as we do after both Kant 
and Heidegger).”
 An important interest in OOO for 
architects should come from its promise of restoring 
a degree of non-instrumental dignity to buildings. 
Although created by humans and for humans, once 
created, buildings have their own trajectories that 
are impossible to reduce to the intentions of any 
particular human constituency. As Harman asserts, 
“you just can’t reduce any object, including an 
architectural one, to its backstory as a project.”As 
Mark Foster Gage observes of the attraction of 
OOO: “That architecture and discrete buildings are 
connected to the larger world is not in dispute,  but 
whether buildings can be legitimized as architecture 
by these relations should be.”2 Take, for example, a 
building’s LEED score, carbon neutrality or other 
measures of its environmental performance. No 
level of environmental sensitivity it exhibits could 
actually justify its existence, because the ultimate 
environmental sensitivity is to not exist in the first 
place. The reasonable conclusion to draw then, 
is that a work of architecture must justify itself 
qua architecture—assuming we understand and 
can defend what that means. Because a work of 
architecture’s essence exceeds (or withdraws from)all 

      HARMAN 
RECOGNIZES THE 
ROOTS OF THESE 

IDEAS IN ARISTOTLE, 
BUT ALSO THAT 

HE DEPARTS FROM 
ARISTOTLE.

“

”



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attempts to definitively encapsulate it, including attempts by its creators, it 
is suggested that architects do well to allude to what it might be. 
     A further aspect of the interest in OOO for architecture, however, 
is not so much in the building objects themselves, but in what Harman 
postulates happens when two objects collide or otherwise make contact. A 
sensual object functioning as an intermediary emerges from these collisions. 
Architects are dreamers of both types of objects.  To round out this foray 
into the thought of Graham Harman is a book review of a volume edited 
by Joseph Bedford on the relevance of OOO for an architectural audience 
entitled Is There an Object Oriented Architecture? Engaging Graham Harman. 
 Taken together, the pieces in this issue begin to explore both the 
benefits and hazards, what is potentialy gained and what may be lost, when 
architecture deals in essences and when essentials are applied to architecture. 
While each essay chips away at the mystique that often accompanies talk 
of essences, and in the process allays some concerns, what is not yet settled, 
however, is whether those concerns can be dispelled altogether. 

This issue, 5.2, with fewer essays than past issues, has given Architecture 
Philosophy a chance to experiment with longer-form pieces. It’s production 
also crosses paths with the 5th biannual ISPA conference (postponed 
one year by Covid) held at Monte Veritá overlooking Lake Maggiore in 
Ascona Switzerland. Despite travel restrictions and other uncertainties, the 
conference was an impressive demonstration of both ISPA’s staying power 
and its creativity. By the time this issue is in print, work will have begun on 
readying the thoughts and ideas for print emanating from that successful 
event. 

ENDNOTES

1. Mark Foster Gage,  “Killing Simplicity: Object-Oriented Philosophy in 
Architecture,” Log 33. 2015, 95.
2. Gage, 100.

 


