ah, ep, you're talking about postmodern philosophy, not architecture. got it, and i agree with you that phenomenology is an influence of postmodern thought. postmodernism (as a condition) is where we are: not necessarily a bad thing, just a condition. you'll note that, along with phenomenology, structuralism and existentialism are also mentioned in that passage as influences in postmodern thinking. all three have influenced architecture, separate from 'postmodern architecture'.
the problem is conflating these with phenomenological thinking about architecture, which is how i interpreted this discussion of jobsite. phenomenology in architecture is, like deconstruction and modern architecture, related to but different from their philosophical foundations. talking about them as one in the same is just a source of confusion.
Ep, are you saying we should take the poetics out of architecture? Isn't that what seperates architecture from building, turns it into art versus simply being utilitarian?
this is sort of a silly line of conversation because i actually see your point, ep. construction is about construction, not touchy feely stuff about sensory stimuli and how we feel about them.
BUT, if we're architects, we're of course going to be interested in those sensory aspects that can be experienced during construction as well. it's how we learn about things. it's a way to become better architects through making ourselves more aware of the potential in process, material decisions, and details. if it helps someone be more interested in an expansion joint if they think about the experiential implications of movement and material properties, so be it.
shutting it down, saying it's ridiculous, is just suggesting that we should be less curious - which would be stupid. intellectual curiosity should ONLY be encouraged, never discouraged.
To the contrary - Poetics and sensory stimulation are inherant to the act of creating, and the creator's method. These attempts to intelectualize the act of building is hurtful in my opinion, because it now invites philosophers and literary critics into a universe they dont belong, influencing the creators who have natural inborn intuition and an evolution of method to borrow from.
i've never met a born carpenter. seems that their skills are learned, too, not inborn and intuitive.
i wish lb were in on this conversation because both she and her husband are living testament to the richness in the relationship between thinking, learning, and making.
too much curiosity - and the potential of learning 'influencing the creators' - can only be a bad thing if you've got a vested political or economic interest in keeping them unlearned.
Steve - Why is it that all acedemics assume their is no other thinking going on? You dont think the carpenter wants to make something beautiful? Maybe its not phenomological but the acedemic tries to control art, and steal the richness of the trade's craft. It is the acedemic who has destroyed the art of making - I'll bet many more carpenters are curious and well learned than most 6 yr. degreed architects, who's curiosity is extruded through a fairly standardized academic filter, and taught not to respect the body of knoweledge passed down through the trades. Is an architect more willing to take a risk? Certainly - but then again they dont have to build it either. Not to fall back on a oft repeated position but Mies was a tradesman and never formaly university educated. Corb was an apprenticed watchmaker and draftsman for Perault and FLW had 2 yrs. of structural engineering before becoming a barn builder. Maybe they were so revolutionary because they werent told how to think, and learned by doing.
I have the opportunity to work with some fine New England Carpenters. One I work with family has been in the building and building furniture business since the late 1600's.
A couple of years ago I was able to engage him in a renovation project. It turns out his father had worked on renovations to this house many years ago and he assisted his dad on the project. This time he is the dad and his son is assisting him. So three generations have done work on this house. It is a wonderful old
shingle style home.
The Son will lead this company into the future, and he does have a gift when it comes to doing a great job....think it is in his blood.
Once and a while I will see his family name come up on the Antique
Road Show where the host are gushing all over about the quality of
workmanship and the fine detailing.
To your point earlier that somehow this is an argument about "learning being a bad thing"/ I think the reaction happening in America is against overly analytical theory and thought for no purpose. Americans, save for a very small group of right wingers, are all for science and technology. They are all for education. But they are common sense people and as a group they seem to be shying away from the effects of 50 years overly critical analysis - Its like we are awaking and calling bullshit bullshit.
ok, then, if it's vocabulary to which you object, skip the term. lets just call it a recognition and appreciation of the phenomena inherent in the construction, process, interactions/intersections, material qualities, and occupation of buildings. certainly this is something about which we can have a conversation - ignoring a certain useful piece of vocabulary. what the word implies is an attitude toward things, an appreciation of things, a comprehension of things. but maybe we don't need the word.
i think that this is, in effect, taking a word, a tool, out of use because it sounds too smart. if a carpenter learned the word 'phenomenology' and understood that it gave a name to his love of his material and the working of it, i think he might find it useful. it might even increase his attention, his consciousness, and his intention in thinking about the phenomenon of touching, working, manipulating, and presenting the material with which he's working. but would that make him an academic?
and snook_dude, i wouldn't discount the experience of those guys you're describing at all. i'm just objecting to the idea that because we AREN'T those guys, that we can't discuss a way of appreciating what they do by looking at it from a certain point-of-view.
depends from which of these (from wiki) you think the architectural understanding of phenomenology might have originated:
Hegel: phenomenology is an approach to philosophy that begins with an exploration of phenomena (what presents itself to us in conscious experience) as a means to finally grasp the absolute, logical, ontological and metaphysical Spirit that is behind phenomena. This has been called a "dialectical phenomenology".
Husserl: phenomenology is "the reflective study of the essence of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view." Phenomenology takes the intuitive experience of phenomena (what presents itself to us in phenomenological reflexion) as its starting point and tries to extract from it the essential features of experiences and the essence of what we experience. When generalized to the essential features of any possible experience, this has been called "transcendental phenomenology".
Heidegger: believed that Husserl's approach overlooked basic structural features of both the subject and object of experience (what he called their "being"), and expanded phenomenological enquiry to encompass our understanding and experience of Being itself, thus making phenomenology the method (in the first phase of his career at least) of the study of being: ontology.
sounds like you may be objecting to a phenomenology based on husserl, while my understanding of the usefulness of understanding both the thing/phenomena and the experience of the thing/phenomena would be from heidegger.
yeah, going back to the original philosophical argument isn't really the way to approach this and i almost didn't make that post. but there aren't really any simple definitions of what this subject means to architecture on dictionary.com or wikipedia. too bad because that's what i would have preferred to use.
phenomenology of the jobsite
Maybe thinking is the wrong phrase - thinking about the solution vs. thinking about perception. Its the total ignorance of the obvious -
ah, ep, you're talking about postmodern philosophy, not architecture. got it, and i agree with you that phenomenology is an influence of postmodern thought. postmodernism (as a condition) is where we are: not necessarily a bad thing, just a condition. you'll note that, along with phenomenology, structuralism and existentialism are also mentioned in that passage as influences in postmodern thinking. all three have influenced architecture, separate from 'postmodern architecture'.
the problem is conflating these with phenomenological thinking about architecture, which is how i interpreted this discussion of jobsite. phenomenology in architecture is, like deconstruction and modern architecture, related to but different from their philosophical foundations. talking about them as one in the same is just a source of confusion.
Ep, are you saying we should take the poetics out of architecture? Isn't that what seperates architecture from building, turns it into art versus simply being utilitarian?
this is sort of a silly line of conversation because i actually see your point, ep. construction is about construction, not touchy feely stuff about sensory stimuli and how we feel about them.
BUT, if we're architects, we're of course going to be interested in those sensory aspects that can be experienced during construction as well. it's how we learn about things. it's a way to become better architects through making ourselves more aware of the potential in process, material decisions, and details. if it helps someone be more interested in an expansion joint if they think about the experiential implications of movement and material properties, so be it.
shutting it down, saying it's ridiculous, is just suggesting that we should be less curious - which would be stupid. intellectual curiosity should ONLY be encouraged, never discouraged.
To the contrary - Poetics and sensory stimulation are inherant to the act of creating, and the creator's method. These attempts to intelectualize the act of building is hurtful in my opinion, because it now invites philosophers and literary critics into a universe they dont belong, influencing the creators who have natural inborn intuition and an evolution of method to borrow from.
the romance of the workingman and the belittling of the academic - as if learning is a bad thing...
i've never met a born carpenter. seems that their skills are learned, too, not inborn and intuitive.
i wish lb were in on this conversation because both she and her husband are living testament to the richness in the relationship between thinking, learning, and making.
too much curiosity - and the potential of learning 'influencing the creators' - can only be a bad thing if you've got a vested political or economic interest in keeping them unlearned.
Steve - Why is it that all acedemics assume their is no other thinking going on? You dont think the carpenter wants to make something beautiful? Maybe its not phenomological but the acedemic tries to control art, and steal the richness of the trade's craft. It is the acedemic who has destroyed the art of making - I'll bet many more carpenters are curious and well learned than most 6 yr. degreed architects, who's curiosity is extruded through a fairly standardized academic filter, and taught not to respect the body of knoweledge passed down through the trades. Is an architect more willing to take a risk? Certainly - but then again they dont have to build it either. Not to fall back on a oft repeated position but Mies was a tradesman and never formaly university educated. Corb was an apprenticed watchmaker and draftsman for Perault and FLW had 2 yrs. of structural engineering before becoming a barn builder. Maybe they were so revolutionary because they werent told how to think, and learned by doing.
I have the opportunity to work with some fine New England Carpenters. One I work with family has been in the building and building furniture business since the late 1600's.
A couple of years ago I was able to engage him in a renovation project. It turns out his father had worked on renovations to this house many years ago and he assisted his dad on the project. This time he is the dad and his son is assisting him. So three generations have done work on this house. It is a wonderful old
shingle style home.
The Son will lead this company into the future, and he does have a gift when it comes to doing a great job....think it is in his blood.
Once and a while I will see his family name come up on the Antique
Road Show where the host are gushing all over about the quality of
workmanship and the fine detailing.
why would you assume someone's an 'academic' because they think that a discussion of phenomenology relative to construction is interesting and useful?
Because its an inherantly acedemic term - in effect, its an invention of the acedemic realm.
To your point earlier that somehow this is an argument about "learning being a bad thing"/ I think the reaction happening in America is against overly analytical theory and thought for no purpose. Americans, save for a very small group of right wingers, are all for science and technology. They are all for education. But they are common sense people and as a group they seem to be shying away from the effects of 50 years overly critical analysis - Its like we are awaking and calling bullshit bullshit.
ok, then, if it's vocabulary to which you object, skip the term. lets just call it a recognition and appreciation of the phenomena inherent in the construction, process, interactions/intersections, material qualities, and occupation of buildings. certainly this is something about which we can have a conversation - ignoring a certain useful piece of vocabulary. what the word implies is an attitude toward things, an appreciation of things, a comprehension of things. but maybe we don't need the word.
i think that this is, in effect, taking a word, a tool, out of use because it sounds too smart. if a carpenter learned the word 'phenomenology' and understood that it gave a name to his love of his material and the working of it, i think he might find it useful. it might even increase his attention, his consciousness, and his intention in thinking about the phenomenon of touching, working, manipulating, and presenting the material with which he's working. but would that make him an academic?
and snook_dude, i wouldn't discount the experience of those guys you're describing at all. i'm just objecting to the idea that because we AREN'T those guys, that we can't discuss a way of appreciating what they do by looking at it from a certain point-of-view.
wait a min - thats changing the definition of the word to mean something else -
depends from which of these (from wiki) you think the architectural understanding of phenomenology might have originated:
Hegel: phenomenology is an approach to philosophy that begins with an exploration of phenomena (what presents itself to us in conscious experience) as a means to finally grasp the absolute, logical, ontological and metaphysical Spirit that is behind phenomena. This has been called a "dialectical phenomenology".
Husserl: phenomenology is "the reflective study of the essence of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view." Phenomenology takes the intuitive experience of phenomena (what presents itself to us in phenomenological reflexion) as its starting point and tries to extract from it the essential features of experiences and the essence of what we experience. When generalized to the essential features of any possible experience, this has been called "transcendental phenomenology".
Heidegger: believed that Husserl's approach overlooked basic structural features of both the subject and object of experience (what he called their "being"), and expanded phenomenological enquiry to encompass our understanding and experience of Being itself, thus making phenomenology the method (in the first phase of his career at least) of the study of being: ontology.
sounds like you may be objecting to a phenomenology based on husserl, while my understanding of the usefulness of understanding both the thing/phenomena and the experience of the thing/phenomena would be from heidegger.
now im confused
yeah, going back to the original philosophical argument isn't really the way to approach this and i almost didn't make that post. but there aren't really any simple definitions of what this subject means to architecture on dictionary.com or wikipedia. too bad because that's what i would have preferred to use.
overheard at jobsite today:
"Fuck this fucked up shit. It's Friday, I'm gonna go have a beer."
emaze I hope it wasn't after he was looking at construction documents.....
Famous quote from a job site project supervisor I worked under for a summer
"this fucking thing is fucking fucked..... let's go for lunch"
Funny thing is that we all knew what he was talking about!..... that's fucked!
The second half is a pretty interesting/funny piece about damn architects.
Block this user
Are you sure you want to block this user and hide all related comments throughout the site?
Archinect
This is your first comment on Archinect. Your comment will be visible once approved.