The Rise of the Architectural Fact (original) (raw)
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This text is the result of an interdisciplinary reflection that tends to lay the foundations for a new concept of architecture, a new architectural paradigm. In light of the transformations occurring at an increasingly rapid pace in the world of science, the sectors of classical knowledge must review their structure and role. In this context, to rediscover its role and cultural meaning, architecture must review its position within the process of transformation of knowledge for which it must somehow account. In other words, to do this, architecture must re-establish the basic assumptions and redefine its specific universe of discourse. Author Graduated in Architecture in the 1970s, he taught at the Italian faculties of Architecture in Rome (Chair of architectural composition, years 73-77) and Naples (Institute of architectural methodology, years 82-83 and 2004) as assistant-presenter of seminars, working on the themes of semiology, representation and design logic. He is currently an independent researcher and for many years has been involved in epistemological and cognitive research on architecture with investigations, currently under development, with fMRI techniques aimed at analyzing the response of the human brain towards architecture.
The construction of architecture
2004
This paper will proceed, via a brief discussion of Hans-Georg Gadamer's anti-aesthetics of architecture, to outline why the architectural metaphor in philosophy is never simply a metaphor, using as a guide the critique of origins and sources contained in Jacques Derrida's essay Qual Quelle. The question will be raised as to whether the tools and structures of philosophy, such as the difference between materiality and non-materiality, abstract thought and practice, are entirely adequate to architectural debate; and whether, in questioning these structures, it is possible to address Bataille's critique of architecture (as interpreted in Denis Hollier's Against Architecture) as the expression of pre-existing social order and power. Tim Gough MA(Cantab) DipArch The Paper Itself What is going to happen between us? Is this paper-which has just begun-a textual object to be communicated to you, a receptive subject? Is this "textual object" an expression of the thoughts of another "subject", namely the one who reads it to you now? Is the receptive subject one, or are they many; and if the latter, what of the communication between them? Or shall we regard what happens between us in a different light-taking a different tack? Could we say instead that the avowedly metaphysical presupposition of subject and object, communication and expression, are simply abstractions from a primary reality-a reality which has an entirely different character? Accepting that the conceptual apparatus of subject and object has its place and use, we would nonetheless question-indeed challenge-a philosophy or theory which would give it pride of place or-what's worse-leave it unquestioned.
This paper investigates the aesthetics of architectural form by addressing ‘when’ this form becomes aesthetically distinctive. The theoretical foundation of this paper is based on Nelson Goodman’s exemplification, density and repleteness as necessary symptoms for any form to function as a work of art. The aim is to introduce this philosophical view to architecture in order to understand how the aesthetics of architectural forms can be inferred from these three symptoms. To pursue this aim, this paper looks at Richard Meier’s Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art where besides its architectural function, the design of the museum with its formal language is considered a work of art in itself. Through morphological analysis and analytical drawings the three symptoms of aesthetics are investigated within the form of the building and identified. The paper concluded that architectural work is aesthetically pleasing when formal design language is syntactically dense, its content is semantically dense, and the design process is replete. The findings of this research encourage a rational understanding of the aesthetic judgment in architecture and provide a major asset in architectural pedagogy. Therefore, when students and instructors go through it, students’ right to develop their own aesthetics is preserved.
The Cunning of Architecture’s Reason
2007
In the past decade, what has been understood by the word 'theory' has been a discourse that has serviced two types of architectural positions. One the one side there is the language of ‘flow’ and its associated liberalist position of open-ended experientialism. On the other side there is ‘techtonics’ and its associations with reactionary imperatives of a phenomenological reclamation of essence. This paper tries to open a third space, one that has received less attention in recent years, but that hones closer to the philosophical problematic of architecture. To that purpose and to resist the tendency to pull philosophy into an operative design position, I will reassess the philosophies of Georg Friedrich Hegel and Martin Heidegger to argue that when taken together they constitute a type of closure to the conventions of theory that needs to be addressed before the potential for an exteriority to theory can be formulated. The question of how to locate theory, which is of course...
Architectural Theory: A Construction Site
FOOTPRINT
Around 1968 we saw the birth of a new architectural theory as the conjunction of architectural history and politically engaged architectural criticism. Not the aesthetics of architecture, but architecture itself in its structural relations with social life became the focus of attention. As a result of this development, it is no longer possible to study architectural history without a critical reflection on the method of the study itself and without a grade of interdisciplinarity. Traditional methods of historiography and iconography have been replaced by new approaches configured by psychoanalysis, deconstruction, cultural studies etc. Appropriation has become the proof of criticality both in architectural theory and in design; however, the understanding of the concepts and methods of other disciplines is basically metaphorical. The problem for a school of architecture lies not in the ‘criticality’ of the kind of architectural theory we described as emerging from the spirit of 1968,...
The Expertise of Architecture & Its History
South African Journal of Art History, Vol 27, no 1 , 2012
Many historical architectural constructions have been recorded and studied, but not all have been theorised. There seems to be a disconnection at several levels between the discourses of architectural history and the history of architectural ideas. The assumption that empirical description of implicit acts of design automatically results in theory also neglects the formative and contextualising role played by ideas, knowledge and interpretation in creative acts of architectural embodiment. Further, both Architectural History and the history of Architectural Ideas seem to be disconnected in the present given the dual dominance of the scientific and the moral-ecological paradigms. This split condition results in the view that theory can only be induced into architectural history from the present, thereby overlooking adjacent histories of ideas and intellectual currents available at the time of making. As temporal displacement and the theoretical reinvention of history increasingly overrule continuity, tradition and translation, architectural knowledge loses sight of its intrinsic transformations. This special edition of SAJAH examines the dialogue between architectural history and the history of architectural ideas.
A Phenomenological Approach Upon The Essence of Architectural Production
IJARR, 2018
The notion of "being" is known as one of the initial problems of philosophy. Depending on its structure and existence, the architectural object has a convenient position to be reviewed in this context. From Plato to present, the question of existence has changed its focus from the universe to the individual, and the attempt to define the answers continues in a dynamic way. Architecture can carry existential concerns within itself as an object produced by a subject in the current philosophical system in which the acquisition of knowledge evolved from mental processes to bodily processes in the period between Kant and Merlau-Ponty. From this point of view, it is possible to talk about the concept of body in philosophical foundation as existentially as well as the body of architectural structure. This paper searches the possibility to make an existential reading through the reviewing of architectural products. The basis of the study is the assumption that the architect's design decisions and the architectural object itself can create an existential posture and this phenomenon can resist in time with the awareness of the architect. In this regard, this paper attempts to discuss the selected works of Carlo Scarpa as an architectural discourse through phenomenological approaches. INTRODUCTION Philosophy and architecture have been in a strong relationship since the beginning of searching the meanings of self and the universe. Due to its natural structure, the architectural act is fed physically and conceptually from all other fields of knowledge and art. In this manner philosophical discourses are continuous tools for the forms of expression in architectural production. With the help of philosophical texts, the conceptual and intellectual approaches can be taken from the process of comprehension and interpretation of the architectural work by the state of the architect at the stage of production and the position of the experienced individual against the space or structure.
Beginning at the ancient debate of whether architecture is or is not part of the “good-arts” system because of its contamination to a specific utility and a proper function, this article will emphasize once more the essence of “dwelling” to its definition and “to Dwell” as the an inner and an intrinsic character of Architecture. In this way one can understand architecture as the "form of being", or "form of living" whose matter is, as sculpture, painting and, especially, music, the human being himself. The gap between the ancient architect and the modern building engineer can be in this way deleted. The one as the other stay at the origin of the compositional architectural process, determining its reasons (arché - tek-ton), mixing two worlds: the one of "ideas" or their intimate representations (A), and the one of matter, techniques and technologies through which the author can materialize its final product (B). It is therefore in the relationship between these two worlds, called World 1 and World 3 by Karl Popper, that intervenes the typical dynamics of the process of architectural composition. If one thinks that aesthetic judgment intervenes only on the final product of a project, quite apart from the compositional process that intervened in shaping the object, it is inevitable to fall in a substantially romantic conception, and educating for an authentic freedom in the act of architectural composition is impossible. If “the forms of beauty” can be many, that through which these forms are determinated reveals to be a process characterized by recurrent features, that is a consistent circularity between the term (A) to the term (B), between World 1 and World 3. This kind of circularity, between World 1 and World 3, need a specific communication “medium”, a sort of “medium matter”, which appears to be fundamental when an artist cannot act directly on his final object (as is the case in architecture). In these cases he needs to use a “medium matter” through which he can progressively conceive, simulate and verify his program, ideas and final results. The purpose of this article is also to develop a few considerations specifically on this medium matter in order to evolve some considerations on its proper nature and required “ductility”. This medium matter is in fact the principal means through which the artist can manage the process of architectural composition. It is the fundamental “sanctuary” in which the original inner inspiration finds a first comparison with measures of matter that is the space where the dynamics of action-reaction and problem-solving begin. Focusing on this particular aspect, the article will take into account the great changing intervened within the last few years, from paper&pencil to Information Technologies and digital data elaboration as typical instrument to evolve the architectural compositional process. From a medium matter which was able to represent the final object by means of well-tried design techniques, we have arrived at new software which can control the process of architectural drawing, once elaborated only in the artist mind. Finally, this paper will try to investigate the main consequences of these changes (A) on the processes of education in architectural composition, and (B) on its final results: can these new instruments change the aesthetics of architecture and transform our general sense of beauty?