After doing a search in Archinect and a little internet reading, (I definitely need to read a book on Phenomenology), I wonder if I have the very basic understanding of all this.
As I understand it, Phenomenology in Architecture relates to your sensory reaction to built space. Or more simply how does the building or space make you feel.
Some architects use materials, textures, and colors to produce phenomena while other architects use the building itself to achieve the same effect. Phenomenology may be the reason that I like Minimalist design best. There is no clutter or ornamentation to interfere with the design. It is the space inside the tea cup that makes it useful. Architecture that incorporates phenomenology is calculated from the very beginning to stir the sensorial primal soup.
Neil Leach said "There's a tendency to associate architects whose work engages the senses (vision, touch, sound, smell) with phenomenology, but I think one of the key things to phenomenology is that: basically, space is physically experienced, but is *not just physical space*, it's mental too. In other words, our experience of a space happens in our imaginations as much as in physical reality. It's that, there is a very real meaning to space, that because we are basically animals that are spatial, space as it is conceived and interpreted and understood through the experience of the occupant is as real as the physical built "bricks and mortar". Physical space is linked to a mental space through human experience. A lot of the time, people will talk about the experience of the space. So how it is used matters as much as what it is made of." (I lifted this from a post by bRink here)
I may have been using this technique for years in my construction business not knowing the real term. I have always thought about the customer walking in and liking the feel, the vibe, the karma or whatever they get from the space.
I am afraid that this post has deteriorated into a rambling collection of thoughts, but anywhooooo.
Am I on the right track with this phenomenology business?
btw...the biggest problem with Phenomenology that a professor of mine who taught at the GSD said existed, is that Phenomenology is really difficult to critique. It is based on subjective understandings about sensory aspects of design that may not apply to everyone. I agree with this...
For earlier architectural writing go back to Steen Eiler Rasmussen ("Experiencing Architecture) - one of the inspirations for Juhani and Holl (Questions of Perception, The Eyes of the Skin). In philosophy Heidegger's essay "Building Dwelling Thinking" is the go-to text. I prefer to go back to Plato's 'chora' in "Timaeus" (which apparently is no longer in vogue).
Phenomenology posits that rather than the a priori meaning of "I" and "object" the meaning derived from experience is the primary driver of being. For example, It's not that the church has meaning in and of itself (it may, but it matters little), it matters in that it's where you got married there, etc, etc.
Merleau-Ponty is popular among environmentalists, but his writing (and to some extent his logic and interpretation of Husserl) is suspect.
there's still something to be said for the value of an experience (just look at the vacation packages revolving around it; as well as the full on marketing campaigns - bud light ads-). Being fluent in the language and the philosophy at it's core couldn't hurt, even if it's a little bit, no?
Peter Zumthor gave a good lecture on Youtube called "Constructing Presence In Architecture". Zumthor is perhaps the best architect in the phenomenological school.
There are three main schools of modern architectural theory; Conceptual, Phenomenological, and Formative. Phenomenology was big in the 90's but has gone out of style. Formative and conceptual seem to have won out.
Perhaps what is so confusing about phenomenology is that its proponents like Steven Holl say they are using it, when in fact they are using more of a conceptual or formal approach.
Fortunately, we are coming to the end of "Modernism" as an architectural theory, and hopefully future theories will create more liveable, habitable, socially responsible architecture.
I do not understand the trend argument, so what? There are no more trends by the way. You can also suggest by way of Deleuze and Derrida (origin of geometry by husserl) to Delanda that we have not really trended out, but merely bifurcated into to children thoughts of phenomenonology. Sure the problem is the inherent subjectivity of it, but when you realize the formal and conceptual that claim more objective positions are essentially just as subjective you understand that "objectivity" has run its course. That is the crisis of european science and transcendentalism. In short, even a small school of neurophenomologist understand the strictly "objective" or third party agreeable conceptual and formal truths are limited and therefore a method of study that incorporates "objectivity" and "subjectivity" will be far more illuminating and frankly a move to evolve science to another level. "Objectivity" like concepts are formal enough for communication, allowing a community to agree (trend as you would call it) but ultimately is detached. "Subjectivity" although not as easily communicable is attached to the phenomenon, it is and can be extension thereof and for this the notion of essence can be experienced. Rem Koolhaas buildings are great on paper and simple enough in concept that everyone gets it, but I have yet to experience a Koolhaas building that was worth experiencing...I am hoping the Seatle library may be able to do that.
ODN: the Seattle Public Library is lame in real life. And it's not aging well at all. So don't get your hopes up.
More broadly re: Phenomenology ...
Husserl's basic philosophical approach was a kind of outgrowth of and reaction to logical positivism, in which knowledge of the world can only be taken from empirical, perceptual experience of phenomena, or that which is perceived directly (as opposed to Kant's noumena: the thing in itself, or that which can be known without perception) without resort to pre-judgment or axiomatic statements.
Applied to architectural design, phenomenology as practiced by Holl, Zumthor, et al. has mostly meant a re-emphasis on the direct perception of space, light, and materiality in the environmental aesthetic experience. This was very much in reaction to the extensive symbolic manipulation of Postmodernism and the rationalist abstraction of twentieth century modernism. Architects had lost touch with the immediate pleasures of simply experiencing a beautiful place or object and got caught up playing pointless mind games with one another (Eisenman comes to mind).
But the phenomenological approach has its limits as well. The aesthetic power of architecture does not derive solely from ephemeral sensory pleasures. The focus on sensory phenomena to the exclusion of everything else is a dead end. They are important, but if you strip away the metaphors and meanings in pursuit of perceptual power, you simply create another kind of unintelligible sterility. The sensory delights need to have some kind of organizing meaning and intelligible order to them - some conceptual content to orient them in our experience of the world and our place in it. I think ultimately Holl, Zumthor, etc. realized this and their work has evolved as they've grappled with it. Zumthor more successfully, but that's probably because his projects have remained relatively small. Holl's success has dramatically increased the scale of his commissions, and scale is a problem in its own special class. His St. Ignatius Chapel is a masterpiece, where the Beijing Linked Hybrid is a mess.
yes all methods for design creation should be incorporated all at once.
Understanding the neurological objective data associated with a a first person experience tied directly to form and space supported in documentation with design concepts seems to be a balanced approach.
Is "Modernism" really coming to an end? That is to bad I really like the cleanness of it all. But you are right about it not being socially responsible though. Glass don't make good walls.
Does anybody else agree that Modernism is dying or dead? Well I took off into the Web and Modernism has been dying for some time now. Note the date of the article.
There are a number of great essays on modernism/modernity and postmodernism/postmodernity (some leads here: http://faculty.georgetown.edu/irvinem/theory/pomo.html ). In general I think our world-view has embraced a more nuanced approach to seeing the world.
phenomenology is nice way to understand that our own histories and experiences matter as much as some abstract idea injected by the designer into spaces; important to note that it isn't just perception, btw. Tuan's "Space and Place" (I believe one of the core readings at UofMN?) and Ed Casey's writings are nice too.
Yes, Modernism is dead. What you see today is Neo-Modernism. Real Modernism was a technique, theory, and a method, not a "style". Philip Johnson redefined modernism as a style with his book "International Style". This killed true modernism by turning it into just a style.
Then there were many post-modern styles: Postmodernism, Structuralism, Post-Structuralism, etc...
Don't worry neo-modernism is alive and well. Just know it is not true modernism, but just a formal stylistic approach.
Phenomenology was one of the many post-modernist theories. Like other forms of post-modernism it offers a critique on modernism. It does offer an excellent critique, but we need to move on to develop a theory that goes beyond modernism/post-modernist critiques.
My suggestion to all architects is to learn what Phenomenology is critiquing, then develop your own theories beyond modernism.
The best original work being done in architectural theory in recent memory is Chris Alexander's Nature of Order series (the books are expensive, but well worth it). But he's not getting any younger, and he's been outside the mainstream for a long time now.
about $240 gwharton. Is it more technical than A Pattern Language? I kind of felt A Pattern Language was so general it was a shot in the dark, hardly worth believing and almost laughable, although it had some decent points...the format turned me off.
Is much of the above (pertaining to architectural theory rather than philosophy) really about phenomenology?
Phenomenology is not simply the study of the representations of objects as they appear (phenomena) to us but also the study of our perception, intended and directed towards these objects. It is not just how about how objects reach towards us but equally about how, and undre which conditions (intrinsic and extrinsic) we reach towards these objects.
Also, in my opinion, specifying generalities of order (a grand formula of experience) ... or generalizing specificity of experience (fetishism of sensation) ..both being trends in so-called architectural phenomenology...are suspect of (varying degrees of) esotericism.
The only way out of this esotericism of architectural phenomenonolgy, as I see it, and tammuz is correct in pointing out how architectural phenomenonology is not exactly philosophical phenomenonology, frankly a watered down feelings exercise many times; the way out is neurophenomology. There can be an architectural equivalent of this, you make or find patterns and proportions in architecture (3d point cloud scanning in time with observer), you study brain data and you run this information parallel with first person understanding. This would NOT be esoteric because you would have objective data of an architectural experience linked to 4d data linked to subjective impressions of the architecture. Furthermore, to ensure the validity of this an architects subjective description based on training, say understanding of patterns and colors as they relate to state of minds and experience, would better inform the abstract results from the empirical data.
Title: Neurophenomenology Speaker: Evan Thompson This video was recorded on October 23-25, 2013 during a Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies International Roundtable, "We Are Our Brains", led by Principal Investigator Dr. Peter B. Reiner (Department of Psychiatry, UBC and the National Core for Neuroethics).
...replace Monks with Architects, and you might get somewhere.
I am not a specialist but I think Hegel is very important to understand phenomenology. When you get the subject-object status of the humankind, the importance of history etc.you can then move to Heiddeger and not only have a "new age" interpretation of it.
For a good intro, you can read Zumthor and Holl. You can also watch the movie To the Wonder by Terrance Malick. The editing of the movie, especially at the beginning, is a really good demonstration of some concepts by Heidegger.
Dany - Hegel's always been a tough one for me, especially his main work, the History was easy.
what is this 'new age' interpretation? does this include the internet? Douglas Coupland's Generation X came in the mail today, never actually read it... how does this post everything post internet fit into a 'new age' interpretation of hegel?
-listening to Nils Frahm's Said and Done as I write this watching on Direct TV South Florida U. football Cheeleaders from behind, 20 girls in unison, cheering something, then they turn and realize they are on camera and smile-
Dany - I think I asked this question on another thread, but can you in your un-specialist way re-interpret Hegel's spirit as the internet, i'd be interested you throwing it out there.
We read a lot about phenomenology and the everyday...
Well, why the everyday? Because it is the setting of the human being's being-there..or rather that it is part of her or his being-there?
but that is an outlooker's outsight on this being, not the being's own inlook.
the being's everyday is both, more superficial and far deeper than appearance and phenomena. she or he is as oblivious to it as a fish is to water, even though her or his every nerve and neuron reacts to its environment in accord.
but, what impels appearance most to appear is the un-everdayness, the discord apropos what the being has inculcated in terms of habits.
and with regads to the latter...I wonder, therefore, whether the most phenomenological awareness (ie not only the perceptual awareness of the environs but equally the awareness of perception made possible by the jolt into the unfamiliar) are not actually those of the non-everyday (and this by virtue of many tools, technological, material, formal) or the everyday taken out of their everydayness (post modern architecture for instance).
Of course, the human imagination need not await an external agent for the surrealization of the everyday. Sometimes, it has the capacity (and indeed, it is that capacity, the everyday only occurs in the absence of the imagination...and the imagination is antithetical to the unconscious slumber of the body within the everyday) to realize the bizarreness of living within a very contingent mélange of accruement of events and spaces (so-called history) and an idiosyncratic spirit, a half aware ideology or what we call a culture. at that moment, this moment of awakening to a spurious reality's contingency, the imagination steps out of this frame of habit and culture. and in this moment, we, rendered aliens, alien to our reality that a moment ago had engaged us in its contracts and pacts of complicity and yet unquestioning participation, we, our heightened awareness not being able to match the immensity of our surroundings, our struck with a mute force.
so, exorcised from the continuity of intelligent anaestheticism that is our everyday, momentarily, we are thrown into a mute and dumb state of aestheticism.
thus, does the phenomenology really warrant the -logy or the logos suffix...from the point of view of the perceptive being, the subject of perception (or, in actual fact, seen from this perspective, he or she is equally the object of her or his virtual abyss of perception) rather than from the point of view of the scientist or the theoretician?
I was not refering Hegel as New Age... it's more Heidegger that is sometime reduced to as a "feel the vibe" philosophy. Tammuz is saying what I mean in an earlier post. I just wanted to add that Hegel is good reading to get beyond that superficial level. For Hegel, I think going through Kojeve or Hippolite lecture is a good way to understand the phenomenology of spirit.
Edit: "And with regards to the latter" was misplaced. should read:
I wonder, therefore, whether the most phenomenological awareness (ie not only the perceptual awareness of the environs but equally the awareness of perception made possible by the jolt into the unfamiliar) are not actually those of the non-everyday (and this by virtue of many tools, technological, material, formal) or the everyday taken out of their everydayness (post modern architecture for instance).
And with regards to the latter, of course, the human imagination need not await an external agent for the surrealization of the everyday. Sometimes, it has the capacity (and indeed, it is that capacity, the everyday only occurs in the absence of the imagination...and the imagination is antithetical to the unconscious slumber of the body within the everyday) to realize the bizarreness of living within a very contingent mélange of accruement of events and spaces (so-called history) and an idiosyncratic spirit, a half aware ideology or what we call a culture. at that moment, this moment of awakening to a spurious reality's contingency, the imagination steps out of this frame of habit and culture. and in this moment, we, rendered aliens, alien to our reality that a moment ago had engaged us in its contracts and pacts of complicity and yet unquestioning participation, we, our heightened awareness not being able to match the immensity of our surroundings, our struck with a mute force.
Of course, the human imagination need not await an external agent for the surrealization of the everyday. Sometimes, it has the capacity (and indeed, it is that capacity, the everyday only occurs in the absence of the imagination...and the imagination is antithetical to the unconscious slumber of the body within the everyday) to realize the bizarreness of living within a very contingent mélange of accruement of events and spaces (so-called history) and an idiosyncratic spirit, a half aware ideology or what we call a culture. at that moment, this moment of awakening to a spurious reality's contingency, the imagination steps out of this frame of habit and culture. and in this moment, we, rendered aliens, alien to our reality that a moment ago had engaged us in its contracts and pacts of complicity and yet unquestioning participation, we, our heightened awareness not being able to match the immensity of our surroundings, our struck with a mute force.
I mean this sincerely, you are a combination of Albert Camus and Sadegh Hedayat struggling with the French version of the Milieu of the current Post-Internet and all the bullshit conditions...
Do your best to not disappear and claim aggressive irrelevant positions, and help those like yourself transition. I mean that with all the racism that may be involved in such a statement.
Omar Khayyam once wrote
all that is nothing. Though you travel from world's end to world's end, all that is nothing. Though you abide in a corner of your house, all that is nothing.
This caravan of life moves on strangely — beware, friend, for thus your pleasure flies from you. Trouble not, therefore, for the grief which awaits our friends on the morrow, for behold how the night passes away !
Why, my friend, puzzle over the problem of existence ? Why trouble your heart and soul with idle questioning ? Live your life in joy, for after all your advice was not asked in the ordering of human affairs.
The very hills would leap for joy did you but wash their steeps with wine. Only a fool is scornful of the flagon. You who bid me re nounce the juice of the vine, learn that wine is the soul of man.
_________
Dany,
What, no, did you say anything? i want your opinion, not theirs.
Olaf, the one being aggressively irrelevant is you here. there could be much to discuss about this topic than irrelevant, holier-than-thou and blatantly silly half madih half hija'a of others. What one chooses to do here on different threads is one's own business...mind your own and spare me your simultaneously idiotic and condescending advice.
I recall that when reading Bachelard's Poetics of Space - a book much made reference to under the rubric of phenomenology- how different seemed those supposedly archetypal spaces to me and therefor how strange Bachelard's familiarity (of course, it is his imagination that, as mentioned in the previous post, takes them outside the realm of the everyday to find in them the very shape of a domestic imagination - in other words, Bachelard's book is more about sensing, from within, the limits and shape of a domestic imagination, w.r.t perception, a post factum) with them...having grown up in apartments all my life.
It is thus also right to be aware that there is an anthropology of phenomenologies...or should it be an anthropological phenomenology? And as such, again we come to the criticism of the "grand formula of experience"...or the mythical singular origin (although as we know from structuralists, our different cultures across the globe, might well share fundamentally similar myths abstracted out of an agrarian imagination or ergonomic one, or corporeal one) which people seem to derive out of a book like Bachelard's. In other words, instead of seeing how malleable -and variable-- the human imagination is in relation to its context, some seem to think that the book, instead, proposes a quasi-religious truth about the fundamental nature of domestic spaces in relation to our well being (and the well being of our imagination).
The cry for the national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me. The sanction for it is sought in the Bible and the tenacity with which the Jews have hankered after return to Palestine.
Why should they not, like other peoples of the earth, make that country their home where they are born and where they earn their livelihood? Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct. The mandates have no sanction but that of the last war. Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home. The nobler course would be to insist on a just treatment of the Jews wherever they are born and bred. The Jews born in France are French in precisely the same sense that Christians born in France are French.
(reading two articles at one time and skyping is not a good idea apparently):
This awareness, that of being aware of pure consciousness, is something that is lacking however even in today’s world, but I propose it will actually increase with the onset of more intelligent, informed, educated brain/minds which find this notion of epoché rather peculiar. If science and philosophy still have not figured out what “consciousness” actually is by then, the posthuman mind will surely want some answers building off of philosophies like Buddhism, phenomenology, philosophy of mind, and consciousness studies along with AI research and neuroscience to overcome the current paradigm of M theory & String theory, and the notion of “the theory of everything” as many physicists and biologists leave out consciousness as part of the nature of the universe, life and mind. I think the transhuman/posthuman mind will continue to seek to understand its own reality, unable to escape fundamental problems of consciousness working towards a complete theory of the universe, expanding a priori ontology and a posteriori ontology and epistemology.
...............
and how can anyone not have doubts about this "great theory of everything"? the above related to some people's conjectures regarding a cognitive phenomenology assisted by new technologies.
As for the connection between philosophic and architectural phenomenology, it's quite explicit. Michael Benedikt (a major exponent of architectural phenomenology - his 1992 book, "For an Architecture of Reality" is seminal in this movement) writes: ( http://www.mbenedikt.com/hdmphenomreview.pdf )
"The five books under consideration here—all phenomenologies—have this in common: they aim to bring architects to their senses. All argue that a building’s meaning, beauty, function, and value lie not just in how it appears—how it looks—but in how it addresses and affects the other senses: hearing, touch, kinesthesia, temperature, balance, and even smell. The architect’s palette as an artist, the architect’s concerns as a social agent, and the architect’s interests as a professional, these books imply, ought to be much broader than purely visual—the undue bias towards which is perpetuated by architecture magazines through photography and by studio education through daily emphasis on screens, drawings and models. The “experiencing subject”—the one who lives in and among buildings—is embodied, and the body cannot be reduced to its eyes."
"It’s useful to begin by recalling that “phenomenology” referred originally to school of philosophy initiated by Edmund Husserl around 1911 and perhaps best summed up by the injunction to take appearances seriously. There’s nothing mere about the texture of everyday experience, about our moods and how they affect the look and feel of things. Such matters ought to be central to philosophy, said Husserl."
Phenomenology in architecture offers an excellent critique of current architectural practice of representing architecture as a "pretty picture". Where almost all the media we see today is about the image of architecture, not the reality of it. Architecture today is more about architectural photography than real architecture. Look at any magazine or website and it is clear architecture in our culture is just an image. This is because architects need to market themselves, and the easiest way is through pretty pictures.
Phenomenology as an actual architectural practice is problematic because it is mainly a theory, not a real process. People like Steven Holl try to use it in architectural practice with limited success. This is because Phenomenology is about an "Ego" experiencing "Phenomena". This sounds good in theory, but in practice what is an "Ego"? Just an abstract idea of consciousness. Too abstract for architecture.
Real architecture is about a human body experiencing a place. Sights, sounds, smells, touch.... movement, sitting, dwelling. Also memory, remembering other places, forms a large part in the architectural experience.
So in the end you don't need a complex theory like Phenomenology to make good architecture. Just design for a real human body to experience a real place, and you can't go wrong.
ghwarton nice link and nice tie-in to Husserl...love Benedikt.
I have an extra-curricular project very much dedicated to the study of phenomenon outside of vision, one that makes time become a factor.
I've actually gone all the way back to George Berkeley lately for other side project reasons. The only phenomenon you can know is in your head - in short.
One of the biggest parts of the human brain is the vision portion, so it's not surprising that our science's are based on essentially vision, leading to Geometry. After all, it was Derrida's "Origin of Geometry" which led me to Husserl. Husserl very much says this in the beginning of the very long titled book - putting it historically in Galileo's hands by the Mathematization of the Philosophy of Nature - or physics. Take this to Hobbes, and you realize there's a short cut to Validity - make everything into a Graph. Math forming in abstract geometrical patterns.
I think the hope of much of what Eisenman and other contemporaries of this time , was that somehow this same validity could happen in architecture minus the math, in other word a cousin of linguistics.
The Grand Narrative is what I think most would like to 'believe' in order to avoid the world that Berkeley had created - the major turn in Jostein Gaardner's book Sophie's World...if you are not into raw philosophy a very good book.
You could also blame this human dependency on the Vision sense for the commodification of everything, including the dwelling. (reading a lot of Keller Easterling recently).
Lastly, Olaf , phenomenology via alcohol is also interesting...or drugs. In "Beyond the Outsider" Colin Wilson does a short essay on the experience of mescalin somewhat in response to Aldous Huxley's "The Doors of Perception"....Amsterdam park in the winter with falling snow and tall Dutch people riding bikes as the trees collapse around you and the noise swirl around you is quite the trip ;)
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Where does the "Spectacle" play into all this?
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the movie that made everything else make sense to me, to quit the superstitions of belief
For the fun of it, you might start reading RAPT. It's more about focusing your attention, but the opening chapters are more about the neuroscience of how we humans interpret the world around us.
An excerpt from a review;
"RAPT begins with a scientific overview of attention and how it works.For instance, we operate in both bottom-up and top-down modes of attention. “Bottom-up attention” refers to what our brains are hardwired to notice, such as brightly colored birds, bad smells, or other things that can “threaten or advance” our survival. But “top-down” attention operates differently, asking us what we want to concentrate on. Our ability to shift between these modes contributes to our ability to survive and thrive. Gallagher builds from here, illuminating how information enters us, how shining the spotlight of attention differently can change our relationship to that information, and how changing that relationship can change our lives."
Anyway, I think it ties in with the phenomenology in architecture and it's backed by a lot of studies.
There are free neuroscience classes from Duke on Coursera running right now that relate to this topic, I am in both and both are easy and interesting, join me! Visual Perception and the Brain and The Brain and Space. I just learned something I didn't know - that when you see, light breaks a double bond and the molecules twist.
It has proved quite popular, unexpectedly, not sure why.
It interprets Heidegger's Being and Time through the lens of Christoper Alexander's idea of the "objectivity" of Good architecture in his The Nature of Order books.
Kent read the texts and started a few others. If you had been hanging around a school of architecture 15 to 20 years ago you probably could of scored a teaching job in theory. the text above cites for the most part the basic philosophy reading equirements of that era and I am not suprised you agree or like what Peter Eisenman was writing om diagrams...............with that said you need to really Edit and not sure how else to say this but your texts are not rigorous enough to make your points clear. there are very clear moments in the tetxs and then moments that are WTF moments. too many analogies and then things appear to morph like 'fallingness' from ambiguity to entropy......................i did find one really good sentence I think about Schemas ------ Schemas are Ontological and are used to comprehend ontic emergent thresholds of phenomena............given that you cite Kant and a text I not familiar with and you do repeat the following a few times "holes in a whole" I think you could probably draw the schemas and it might be more clear as its presumably a priori in perhaps a Girgio Agamben 'Infancy'. also a few spelling mistakes and from what I could tell its 'ipseity' and not 'ipsity'.
phenomenology
After doing a search in Archinect and a little internet reading, (I definitely need to read a book on Phenomenology), I wonder if I have the very basic understanding of all this.
As I understand it, Phenomenology in Architecture relates to your sensory reaction to built space. Or more simply how does the building or space make you feel.
Some architects use materials, textures, and colors to produce phenomena while other architects use the building itself to achieve the same effect. Phenomenology may be the reason that I like Minimalist design best. There is no clutter or ornamentation to interfere with the design. It is the space inside the tea cup that makes it useful. Architecture that incorporates phenomenology is calculated from the very beginning to stir the sensorial primal soup.
Neil Leach said "There's a tendency to associate architects whose work engages the senses (vision, touch, sound, smell) with phenomenology, but I think one of the key things to phenomenology is that: basically, space is physically experienced, but is *not just physical space*, it's mental too. In other words, our experience of a space happens in our imaginations as much as in physical reality. It's that, there is a very real meaning to space, that because we are basically animals that are spatial, space as it is conceived and interpreted and understood through the experience of the occupant is as real as the physical built "bricks and mortar". Physical space is linked to a mental space through human experience. A lot of the time, people will talk about the experience of the space. So how it is used matters as much as what it is made of." (I lifted this from a post by bRink here)
I may have been using this technique for years in my construction business not knowing the real term. I have always thought about the customer walking in and liking the feel, the vibe, the karma or whatever they get from the space.
I am afraid that this post has deteriorated into a rambling collection of thoughts, but anywhooooo.
Am I on the right track with this phenomenology business?
Also known as perception.
Yes. Architect list: Juhani Pallasmaa, Steven Holl.....Philosopher list: Edmund Husserl, Merleau Ponty.....that should get you started.
Tint, Isn’t phenomenology a method of study? Don’t you use phenomenology as a method to study why your “feel”?
btw...the biggest problem with Phenomenology that a professor of mine who taught at the GSD said existed, is that Phenomenology is really difficult to critique. It is based on subjective understandings about sensory aspects of design that may not apply to everyone. I agree with this...
Yes Carrera, the study of phenomena!
I thought phenomenology was a way to predict an individual's personality and character by the shape of their head.
That'd be phrenology.
For earlier architectural writing go back to Steen Eiler Rasmussen ("Experiencing Architecture) - one of the inspirations for Juhani and Holl (Questions of Perception, The Eyes of the Skin). In philosophy Heidegger's essay "Building Dwelling Thinking" is the go-to text. I prefer to go back to Plato's 'chora' in "Timaeus" (which apparently is no longer in vogue).
Phenomenology posits that rather than the a priori meaning of "I" and "object" the meaning derived from experience is the primary driver of being. For example, It's not that the church has meaning in and of itself (it may, but it matters little), it matters in that it's where you got married there, etc, etc.
Merleau-Ponty is popular among environmentalists, but his writing (and to some extent his logic and interpretation of Husserl) is suspect.
Architectural phenomenology is so '90s.
i heard the same thing about feng shui the other day gwharton. can't keep up anymore.
there's still something to be said for the value of an experience (just look at the vacation packages revolving around it; as well as the full on marketing campaigns - bud light ads-). Being fluent in the language and the philosophy at it's core couldn't hurt, even if it's a little bit, no?
Peter Zumthor gave a good lecture on Youtube called "Constructing Presence In Architecture". Zumthor is perhaps the best architect in the phenomenological school.
There are three main schools of modern architectural theory; Conceptual, Phenomenological, and Formative. Phenomenology was big in the 90's but has gone out of style. Formative and conceptual seem to have won out.
Perhaps what is so confusing about phenomenology is that its proponents like Steven Holl say they are using it, when in fact they are using more of a conceptual or formal approach.
Fortunately, we are coming to the end of "Modernism" as an architectural theory, and hopefully future theories will create more liveable, habitable, socially responsible architecture.
I do not understand the trend argument, so what? There are no more trends by the way. You can also suggest by way of Deleuze and Derrida (origin of geometry by husserl) to Delanda that we have not really trended out, but merely bifurcated into to children thoughts of phenomenonology. Sure the problem is the inherent subjectivity of it, but when you realize the formal and conceptual that claim more objective positions are essentially just as subjective you understand that "objectivity" has run its course. That is the crisis of european science and transcendentalism. In short, even a small school of neurophenomologist understand the strictly "objective" or third party agreeable conceptual and formal truths are limited and therefore a method of study that incorporates "objectivity" and "subjectivity" will be far more illuminating and frankly a move to evolve science to another level. "Objectivity" like concepts are formal enough for communication, allowing a community to agree (trend as you would call it) but ultimately is detached. "Subjectivity" although not as easily communicable is attached to the phenomenon, it is and can be extension thereof and for this the notion of essence can be experienced. Rem Koolhaas buildings are great on paper and simple enough in concept that everyone gets it, but I have yet to experience a Koolhaas building that was worth experiencing...I am hoping the Seatle library may be able to do that.
ODN: the Seattle Public Library is lame in real life. And it's not aging well at all. So don't get your hopes up.
More broadly re: Phenomenology ...
Husserl's basic philosophical approach was a kind of outgrowth of and reaction to logical positivism, in which knowledge of the world can only be taken from empirical, perceptual experience of phenomena, or that which is perceived directly (as opposed to Kant's noumena: the thing in itself, or that which can be known without perception) without resort to pre-judgment or axiomatic statements.
Applied to architectural design, phenomenology as practiced by Holl, Zumthor, et al. has mostly meant a re-emphasis on the direct perception of space, light, and materiality in the environmental aesthetic experience. This was very much in reaction to the extensive symbolic manipulation of Postmodernism and the rationalist abstraction of twentieth century modernism. Architects had lost touch with the immediate pleasures of simply experiencing a beautiful place or object and got caught up playing pointless mind games with one another (Eisenman comes to mind).
But the phenomenological approach has its limits as well. The aesthetic power of architecture does not derive solely from ephemeral sensory pleasures. The focus on sensory phenomena to the exclusion of everything else is a dead end. They are important, but if you strip away the metaphors and meanings in pursuit of perceptual power, you simply create another kind of unintelligible sterility. The sensory delights need to have some kind of organizing meaning and intelligible order to them - some conceptual content to orient them in our experience of the world and our place in it. I think ultimately Holl, Zumthor, etc. realized this and their work has evolved as they've grappled with it. Zumthor more successfully, but that's probably because his projects have remained relatively small. Holl's success has dramatically increased the scale of his commissions, and scale is a problem in its own special class. His St. Ignatius Chapel is a masterpiece, where the Beijing Linked Hybrid is a mess.
Excellent post gwharton...have jump off the bus will respond later..taking you as analogy for what I was saying at end...
yes all methods for design creation should be incorporated all at once.
Understanding the neurological objective data associated with a a first person experience tied directly to form and space supported in documentation with design concepts seems to be a balanced approach.
Jaime,
Is "Modernism" really coming to an end? That is to bad I really like the cleanness of it all. But you are right about it not being socially responsible though. Glass don't make good walls.
Does anybody else agree that Modernism is dying or dead? Well I took off into the Web and Modernism has been dying for some time now. Note the date of the article.
There are a number of great essays on modernism/modernity and postmodernism/postmodernity (some leads here: http://faculty.georgetown.edu/irvinem/theory/pomo.html ). In general I think our world-view has embraced a more nuanced approach to seeing the world.
phenomenology is nice way to understand that our own histories and experiences matter as much as some abstract idea injected by the designer into spaces; important to note that it isn't just perception, btw. Tuan's "Space and Place" (I believe one of the core readings at UofMN?) and Ed Casey's writings are nice too.
go do it,
Yes, Modernism is dead. What you see today is Neo-Modernism. Real Modernism was a technique, theory, and a method, not a "style". Philip Johnson redefined modernism as a style with his book "International Style". This killed true modernism by turning it into just a style.
Then there were many post-modern styles: Postmodernism, Structuralism, Post-Structuralism, etc...
Don't worry neo-modernism is alive and well. Just know it is not true modernism, but just a formal stylistic approach.
Phenomenology was one of the many post-modernist theories. Like other forms of post-modernism it offers a critique on modernism. It does offer an excellent critique, but we need to move on to develop a theory that goes beyond modernism/post-modernist critiques.
My suggestion to all architects is to learn what Phenomenology is critiquing, then develop your own theories beyond modernism.
The best original work being done in architectural theory in recent memory is Chris Alexander's Nature of Order series (the books are expensive, but well worth it). But he's not getting any younger, and he's been outside the mainstream for a long time now.
about $240 gwharton. Is it more technical than A Pattern Language? I kind of felt A Pattern Language was so general it was a shot in the dark, hardly worth believing and almost laughable, although it had some decent points...the format turned me off.
It's a lot more technical and in-depth, though not quite as rigorous as I'd hoped it would be. You can find a summary here:
http://www.natureoforder.com/overview.htm
Is much of the above (pertaining to architectural theory rather than philosophy) really about phenomenology?
Phenomenology is not simply the study of the representations of objects as they appear (phenomena) to us but also the study of our perception, intended and directed towards these objects. It is not just how about how objects reach towards us but equally about how, and undre which conditions (intrinsic and extrinsic) we reach towards these objects.
Also, in my opinion, specifying generalities of order (a grand formula of experience) ... or generalizing specificity of experience (fetishism of sensation) ..both being trends in so-called architectural phenomenology...are suspect of (varying degrees of) esotericism.
The only way out of this esotericism of architectural phenomenonolgy, as I see it, and tammuz is correct in pointing out how architectural phenomenonology is not exactly philosophical phenomenonology, frankly a watered down feelings exercise many times; the way out is neurophenomology. There can be an architectural equivalent of this, you make or find patterns and proportions in architecture (3d point cloud scanning in time with observer), you study brain data and you run this information parallel with first person understanding. This would NOT be esoteric because you would have objective data of an architectural experience linked to 4d data linked to subjective impressions of the architecture. Furthermore, to ensure the validity of this an architects subjective description based on training, say understanding of patterns and colors as they relate to state of minds and experience, would better inform the abstract results from the empirical data.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3tYzAt0KTI#t=261
Published on Feb 5, 2014
Title: Neurophenomenology
Speaker: Evan Thompson
This video was recorded on October 23-25, 2013 during a Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies International Roundtable, "We Are Our Brains", led by Principal Investigator Dr. Peter B. Reiner (Department of Psychiatry, UBC and the National Core for Neuroethics).
...replace Monks with Architects, and you might get somewhere.
I am not a specialist but I think Hegel is very important to understand phenomenology. When you get the subject-object status of the humankind, the importance of history etc.you can then move to Heiddeger and not only have a "new age" interpretation of it.
For a good intro, you can read Zumthor and Holl. You can also watch the movie To the Wonder by Terrance Malick. The editing of the movie, especially at the beginning, is a really good demonstration of some concepts by Heidegger.
Dany - Hegel's always been a tough one for me, especially his main work, the History was easy.
what is this 'new age' interpretation? does this include the internet? Douglas Coupland's Generation X came in the mail today, never actually read it... how does this post everything post internet fit into a 'new age' interpretation of hegel?
-listening to Nils Frahm's Said and Done as I write this watching on Direct TV South Florida U. football Cheeleaders from behind, 20 girls in unison, cheering something, then they turn and realize they are on camera and smile-
Dany - I think I asked this question on another thread, but can you in your un-specialist way re-interpret Hegel's spirit as the internet, i'd be interested you throwing it out there.
We read a lot about phenomenology and the everyday...
Well, why the everyday? Because it is the setting of the human being's being-there..or rather that it is part of her or his being-there?
but that is an outlooker's outsight on this being, not the being's own inlook.
the being's everyday is both, more superficial and far deeper than appearance and phenomena. she or he is as oblivious to it as a fish is to water, even though her or his every nerve and neuron reacts to its environment in accord.
but, what impels appearance most to appear is the un-everdayness, the discord apropos what the being has inculcated in terms of habits.
and with regads to the latter...I wonder, therefore, whether the most phenomenological awareness (ie not only the perceptual awareness of the environs but equally the awareness of perception made possible by the jolt into the unfamiliar) are not actually those of the non-everyday (and this by virtue of many tools, technological, material, formal) or the everyday taken out of their everydayness (post modern architecture for instance).
Of course, the human imagination need not await an external agent for the surrealization of the everyday. Sometimes, it has the capacity (and indeed, it is that capacity, the everyday only occurs in the absence of the imagination...and the imagination is antithetical to the unconscious slumber of the body within the everyday) to realize the bizarreness of living within a very contingent mélange of accruement of events and spaces (so-called history) and an idiosyncratic spirit, a half aware ideology or what we call a culture. at that moment, this moment of awakening to a spurious reality's contingency, the imagination steps out of this frame of habit and culture. and in this moment, we, rendered aliens, alien to our reality that a moment ago had engaged us in its contracts and pacts of complicity and yet unquestioning participation, we, our heightened awareness not being able to match the immensity of our surroundings, our struck with a mute force.
so, exorcised from the continuity of intelligent anaestheticism that is our everyday, momentarily, we are thrown into a mute and dumb state of aestheticism.
thus, does the phenomenology really warrant the -logy or the logos suffix...from the point of view of the perceptive being, the subject of perception (or, in actual fact, seen from this perspective, he or she is equally the object of her or his virtual abyss of perception) rather than from the point of view of the scientist or the theoretician?
I was not refering Hegel as New Age... it's more Heidegger that is sometime reduced to as a "feel the vibe" philosophy. Tammuz is saying what I mean in an earlier post. I just wanted to add that Hegel is good reading to get beyond that superficial level. For Hegel, I think going through Kojeve or Hippolite lecture is a good way to understand the phenomenology of spirit.
Edit: "And with regards to the latter" was misplaced. should read:
I wonder, therefore, whether the most phenomenological awareness (ie not only the perceptual awareness of the environs but equally the awareness of perception made possible by the jolt into the unfamiliar) are not actually those of the non-everyday (and this by virtue of many tools, technological, material, formal) or the everyday taken out of their everydayness (post modern architecture for instance).
And with regards to the latter, of course, the human imagination need not await an external agent for the surrealization of the everyday. Sometimes, it has the capacity (and indeed, it is that capacity, the everyday only occurs in the absence of the imagination...and the imagination is antithetical to the unconscious slumber of the body within the everyday) to realize the bizarreness of living within a very contingent mélange of accruement of events and spaces (so-called history) and an idiosyncratic spirit, a half aware ideology or what we call a culture. at that moment, this moment of awakening to a spurious reality's contingency, the imagination steps out of this frame of habit and culture. and in this moment, we, rendered aliens, alien to our reality that a moment ago had engaged us in its contracts and pacts of complicity and yet unquestioning participation, we, our heightened awareness not being able to match the immensity of our surroundings, our struck with a mute force.
Of course, the human imagination need not await an external agent for the surrealization of the everyday. Sometimes, it has the capacity (and indeed, it is that capacity, the everyday only occurs in the absence of the imagination...and the imagination is antithetical to the unconscious slumber of the body within the everyday) to realize the bizarreness of living within a very contingent mélange of accruement of events and spaces (so-called history) and an idiosyncratic spirit, a half aware ideology or what we call a culture. at that moment, this moment of awakening to a spurious reality's contingency, the imagination steps out of this frame of habit and culture. and in this moment, we, rendered aliens, alien to our reality that a moment ago had engaged us in its contracts and pacts of complicity and yet unquestioning participation, we, our heightened awareness not being able to match the immensity of our surroundings, our struck with a mute force.
Dear Tammuz Noctilucent,
I mean this sincerely, you are a combination of Albert Camus and Sadegh Hedayat struggling with the French version of the Milieu of the current Post-Internet and all the bullshit conditions...
Do your best to not disappear and claim aggressive irrelevant positions, and help those like yourself transition. I mean that with all the racism that may be involved in such a statement.
Omar Khayyam once wrote
all that is nothing. Though you travel from
world's end to world's end, all that is nothing.
Though you abide in a corner of your house,
all that is nothing.
This caravan of life moves on strangely —
beware, friend, for thus your pleasure flies
from you. Trouble not, therefore, for the grief
which awaits our friends on the morrow, for
behold how the night passes away !
Why, my friend, puzzle over the problem of
existence ? Why trouble your heart and soul
with idle questioning ? Live your life in joy,
for after all your advice was not asked in the
ordering of human affairs.
The very hills would leap for joy did you but
wash their steeps with wine. Only a fool is
scornful of the flagon. You who bid me re
nounce the juice of the vine, learn that wine is
the soul of man.
_________
Dany,
What, no, did you say anything? i want your opinion, not theirs.
- ODN
Olaf, the one being aggressively irrelevant is you here. there could be much to discuss about this topic than irrelevant, holier-than-thou and blatantly silly half madih half hija'a of others. What one chooses to do here on different threads is one's own business...mind your own and spare me your simultaneously idiotic and condescending advice.
I recall that when reading Bachelard's Poetics of Space - a book much made reference to under the rubric of phenomenology- how different seemed those supposedly archetypal spaces to me and therefor how strange Bachelard's familiarity (of course, it is his imagination that, as mentioned in the previous post, takes them outside the realm of the everyday to find in them the very shape of a domestic imagination - in other words, Bachelard's book is more about sensing, from within, the limits and shape of a domestic imagination, w.r.t perception, a post factum) with them...having grown up in apartments all my life.
It is thus also right to be aware that there is an anthropology of phenomenologies...or should it be an anthropological phenomenology? And as such, again we come to the criticism of the "grand formula of experience"...or the mythical singular origin (although as we know from structuralists, our different cultures across the globe, might well share fundamentally similar myths abstracted out of an agrarian imagination or ergonomic one, or corporeal one) which people seem to derive out of a book like Bachelard's. In other words, instead of seeing how malleable -and variable-- the human imagination is in relation to its context, some seem to think that the book, instead, proposes a quasi-religious truth about the fundamental nature of domestic spaces in relation to our well being (and the well being of our imagination).
From: The Jews In Palestine
By Mahatma Gandhi
Published in the Harijan
26-11-1938
The cry for the national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me. The sanction for it is sought in the Bible and the tenacity with which the Jews have hankered after return to Palestine.
Why should they not, like other peoples of the earth, make that country their home where they are born and where they earn their livelihood? Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct. The mandates have no sanction but that of the last war. Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home. The nobler course would be to insist on a just treatment of the Jews wherever they are born and bred. The Jews born in France are French in precisely the same sense that Christians born in France are French.
http://ieet.org/index.php/ieet/more/notaro20100204Ignore the above article linked to another thread, I rather meant to link to
(reading two articles at one time and skyping is not a good idea apparently):
This awareness, that of being aware of pure consciousness, is something that is lacking however even in today’s world, but I propose it will actually increase with the onset of more intelligent, informed, educated brain/minds which find this notion of epoché rather peculiar. If science and philosophy still have not figured out what “consciousness” actually is by then, the posthuman mind will surely want some answers building off of philosophies like Buddhism, phenomenology, philosophy of mind, and consciousness studies along with AI research and neuroscience to overcome the current paradigm of M theory & String theory, and the notion of “the theory of everything” as many physicists and biologists leave out consciousness as part of the nature of the universe, life and mind. I think the transhuman/posthuman mind will continue to seek to understand its own reality, unable to escape fundamental problems of consciousness working towards a complete theory of the universe, expanding a priori ontology and a posteriori ontology and epistemology.
...............
and how can anyone not have doubts about this "great theory of everything"? the above related to some people's conjectures regarding a cognitive phenomenology assisted by new technologies.
Typically clients don't pay for philosophies
s=r*(theta): You might be surprised.
As for the connection between philosophic and architectural phenomenology, it's quite explicit. Michael Benedikt (a major exponent of architectural phenomenology - his 1992 book, "For an Architecture of Reality" is seminal in this movement) writes: ( http://www.mbenedikt.com/hdmphenomreview.pdf )
"The five books under consideration here—all phenomenologies—have this in common: they aim to bring architects to their senses. All argue that a building’s meaning, beauty, function, and value lie not just in how it appears—how it looks—but in how it addresses and affects the other senses: hearing, touch, kinesthesia, temperature, balance, and even smell. The architect’s palette as an artist, the architect’s concerns as a social agent, and the architect’s interests as a professional, these books imply, ought to be much broader than purely visual—the undue bias towards which is perpetuated by architecture magazines through photography and by studio education through daily emphasis on screens, drawings and models. The “experiencing subject”—the one who lives in and among buildings—is embodied, and the body cannot be reduced to its eyes."
"It’s useful to begin by recalling that “phenomenology” referred originally to school of philosophy initiated by Edmund Husserl around 1911 and perhaps best summed up by the injunction to take appearances seriously. There’s nothing mere about the texture of everyday experience, about our moods and how they affect the look and feel of things. Such matters ought to be central to philosophy, said Husserl."
Phenomenology in architecture offers an excellent critique of current architectural practice of representing architecture as a "pretty picture". Where almost all the media we see today is about the image of architecture, not the reality of it. Architecture today is more about architectural photography than real architecture. Look at any magazine or website and it is clear architecture in our culture is just an image. This is because architects need to market themselves, and the easiest way is through pretty pictures.
Phenomenology as an actual architectural practice is problematic because it is mainly a theory, not a real process. People like Steven Holl try to use it in architectural practice with limited success. This is because Phenomenology is about an "Ego" experiencing "Phenomena". This sounds good in theory, but in practice what is an "Ego"? Just an abstract idea of consciousness. Too abstract for architecture.
Real architecture is about a human body experiencing a place. Sights, sounds, smells, touch.... movement, sitting, dwelling. Also memory, remembering other places, forms a large part in the architectural experience.
So in the end you don't need a complex theory like Phenomenology to make good architecture. Just design for a real human body to experience a real place, and you can't go wrong.
ghwarton nice link and nice tie-in to Husserl...love Benedikt.
I have an extra-curricular project very much dedicated to the study of phenomenon outside of vision, one that makes time become a factor.
I've actually gone all the way back to George Berkeley lately for other side project reasons. The only phenomenon you can know is in your head - in short.
One of the biggest parts of the human brain is the vision portion, so it's not surprising that our science's are based on essentially vision, leading to Geometry. After all, it was Derrida's "Origin of Geometry" which led me to Husserl. Husserl very much says this in the beginning of the very long titled book - putting it historically in Galileo's hands by the Mathematization of the Philosophy of Nature - or physics. Take this to Hobbes, and you realize there's a short cut to Validity - make everything into a Graph. Math forming in abstract geometrical patterns.
I think the hope of much of what Eisenman and other contemporaries of this time , was that somehow this same validity could happen in architecture minus the math, in other word a cousin of linguistics.
The Grand Narrative is what I think most would like to 'believe' in order to avoid the world that Berkeley had created - the major turn in Jostein Gaardner's book Sophie's World...if you are not into raw philosophy a very good book.
You could also blame this human dependency on the Vision sense for the commodification of everything, including the dwelling. (reading a lot of Keller Easterling recently).
Lastly, Olaf , phenomenology via alcohol is also interesting...or drugs. In "Beyond the Outsider" Colin Wilson does a short essay on the experience of mescalin somewhat in response to Aldous Huxley's "The Doors of Perception"....Amsterdam park in the winter with falling snow and tall Dutch people riding bikes as the trees collapse around you and the noise swirl around you is quite the trip ;)
----
Where does the "Spectacle" play into all this?
---
the movie that made everything else make sense to me, to quit the superstitions of belief
oddly enough Phenomenon (1996)
For the fun of it, you might start reading RAPT. It's more about focusing your attention, but the opening chapters are more about the neuroscience of how we humans interpret the world around us.
An excerpt from a review;
"RAPT begins with a scientific overview of attention and how it works.For instance, we operate in both bottom-up and top-down modes of attention. “Bottom-up attention” refers to what our brains are hardwired to notice, such as brightly colored birds, bad smells, or other things that can “threaten or advance” our survival. But “top-down” attention operates differently, asking us what we want to concentrate on. Our ability to shift between these modes contributes to our ability to survive and thrive. Gallagher builds from here, illuminating how information enters us, how shining the spotlight of attention differently can change our relationship to that information, and how changing that relationship can change our lives."
Anyway, I think it ties in with the phenomenology in architecture and it's backed by a lot of studies.
RAPT
found it by googling your qoutation, otherwise a hard to find via google without the author...linked either way
just arrived in the mail "Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind" by Evan Thompson....looking forward to it.
Looks like a good book, Chris.
There are free neuroscience classes from Duke on Coursera running right now that relate to this topic, I am in both and both are easy and interesting, join me! Visual Perception and the Brain and The Brain and Space. I just learned something I didn't know - that when you see, light breaks a double bond and the molecules twist.
I have written an article called "Living Spaces" about Phenomenology of Space See http://kp0.me/PhenomenologyOfLivingSpaces
It has proved quite popular, unexpectedly, not sure why.
It interprets Heidegger's Being and Time through the lens of Christoper Alexander's idea of the "objectivity" of Good architecture in his The Nature of Order books.
Kent Palmer
http://kdp.me
http://kp0.me/AcademiaEdu
thanks for link. will def. read....gardening for the moment...
Kent read the texts and started a few others. If you had been hanging around a school of architecture 15 to 20 years ago you probably could of scored a teaching job in theory. the text above cites for the most part the basic philosophy reading equirements of that era and I am not suprised you agree or like what Peter Eisenman was writing om diagrams...............with that said you need to really Edit and not sure how else to say this but your texts are not rigorous enough to make your points clear. there are very clear moments in the tetxs and then moments that are WTF moments. too many analogies and then things appear to morph like 'fallingness' from ambiguity to entropy......................i did find one really good sentence I think about Schemas ------ Schemas are Ontological and are used to comprehend ontic emergent thresholds of phenomena............given that you cite Kant and a text I not familiar with and you do repeat the following a few times "holes in a whole" I think you could probably draw the schemas and it might be more clear as its presumably a priori in perhaps a Girgio Agamben 'Infancy'. also a few spelling mistakes and from what I could tell its 'ipseity' and not 'ipsity'.
Chris, how did you do that?....put "given" outside the border? Scary.
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