Tracing Heidegger’s Influence on Architecture

HEIDEGGER’S INFLUENCE ON ARCHITECTURE: An Inventory of Ideas and a Bibliographical Genealogy

Benjamin Zenk Prof. Ron Bontekoe

PHIL 699 -‐ Heidegger May 16, 2014

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INTRODUCTION

This study simply documents some of Heidegger’s influence on architecture and

architectural theory. After juxtaposing some of Heidegger’s most explicitly

architectural ideas with an old conflict between architecture and philosophy, it

offers a limited intellectual biography of Heidegger with attention to the works

and events in which Heidegger engages directly with architectural ideas. Next, it

offers a philosophical inventory of some of the ideas in Heidegger’s writings that

are architecturally suggestive. After that, it compiles some bibliographical entries

that begin to trace the influence of Heidegger’s thought on architects and

architectural theorists. It concludes with a recap of the general architectural

question that Heiddeger’s thought poses. There are of course resources here and

there that address Heidegger’s influence on architects and architectural theorists.

To my knowledge, however, no single study has gathered these accounts together

to give a succinct account of Heidegger’s promise and influence in this respect that

can also be broadly informative as a reference for those beginning to study

Heidegger with attention to what is architectural in his thought. While this brief

paper cannot hope to be comprehensive to that end in this limited space and

measured time, it begins the task.

PHILOSOPHY & ARCHITECTURE

Philosophers have often found it difficult to praise architectural forms as having

anything but derivative aesthetic value. After all, the art of building is constrained

by necessity and utility in a way that other arts are not, and this has deleterious

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affects on the formal autonomy of such works.1

In the work of Renaissance architect and art theorist Leon Battista Alberti,

however, the tables are turned. There, one finds a clear devaluation of philosophy.

Alberti does not hesitate to make favorable reference to Plato’s Republic in his

defense of the pursuit of architectural ideals – perfectly beautiful and integrated

edifices. Yet, his attitude toward Plato is ambivalent. Alberti makes use of many

arguments from Plato, since they serve his purposes, but he rejects Plato’s

transcendent and metaphysical project. In Alberti’s satirical work Momus, his

devaluation of philosophy appears in full, often comical force. For instance,

Socrates is found bothering a shoemaker about the ideal leather,2 Apollo curses

himself for having asked the philosophers rather than the architects about the

ideal city,3 and the protagonist Charon declares that painters know more than

philosophers because they see the formal essences of bodies while philosophers

merely engage in “subtleties and verbal quibbles.”4 The pursuits of architects are

strongly appraised in Alberti’s works as being virtuous and as being proper – at

least more obviously so than the dialectical pursuits of Plato’s ideal philosopher –

for sustained and consequential reflection upon social and of course architectural

ideals.

1 Travis T. Anderson, “Complicating Heidegger and the Truth of Architecture,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 69, no. 1 (February 02, 2011), 71. Anderson mentions Hegel and Schopenhauer in pointing out this devaluation of architecture by philosophers. 2 Leon Battista Alberti, Momus, ed. Virginia Brown and Sarah Knight, trans. Sarah Knight, The I Tatti Renaissance Library ITRL 8 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003), 253-‐255. 3 Ibid., 281. 4 Ibid., 307.

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Heidegger can be read as engaged in polemics with philosophical pursuits

as traditionally conceived. He and Alberti have this much in common. They both

reject traditional, disembodied metaphysics and they both ultimately rely on

architectural concepts to give foundational accounts of human experience. To the

extent that Heidegger’s polemical thought is also architecturally suggestive, the

appropriation of his thought by architects and architectural theorists may be

implicated in a similar antagonism, an antagonism continuous with that of Alberti.

The most readily adopted architectural notions from Heidegger’s

philosophical vocabulary are ‘building’ and ‘dwelling.’ According to Heidegger,

dwelling is the necessary condition of building: “We attain to dwelling, so it seems,

only by means of building.”5 It follows from this that to the very extent that

dwelling is made comprehensive in Heideggerian thought, building is also made

comprehensive. On the one hand, the literality of this primordial "building" may

thus be understood as reduced to an architectural metaphor. On an equally

plausible reading, however – one that is perhaps of more use to architectural

theorists – Heidegger is implying that architectural ideas are fundamental to

human being-‐in-‐the-‐world in a non-‐metaphorical way. This is not a new

suggestion, by any means, and it is this reading that seems to sustain the relevance

of Heidegger’s work in an architectural context.

In Alberti’s Momus, mockery at the frivolousness of asking Socrates what

the most just city would look like is a recurring theme. Only an architect, it is

5 Martin Heidegger, “Building Dwelling Thinking,” in Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell, trans. Albert Hofstadter, 2nd ed. (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1993), 347.

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suggested, can pose relevant answers to such fundamental questions. The

suggestion one finds in tracing the evolution of Heidegger’s thought is that

perhaps the most fundamental questions are in fact architectural. Plato's Socrates

insisted that no remnant of Kallipolis would ever come into being until

philosophers became kings or kings became philosophers. Via Alberti’s Momus

and via an architectural reading of Heidegger (a reading perhaps implied by later

Heidegger himself), a further stipulation suggests itself: for Kallipolis to be

achieved, either these philosophers must become architects or architects must

become philosophers.

HEIDEGGER & ARCHITECTURE

Heidegger as philosopher eventually gave way to Heidegger as architect, if only in

a metaphorical way. Heidegger’s philosophy, especially in the later period of his

intellectual output, engages metaphors that are unmistakably architectural. This

thinking is exemplified by his 1951 lecture “Bauen Wohnen Denken” (“Building

Dwelling Thinking”), where the concepts of building, dwelling, and thinking are

integrated in a way that accords with Heidegger’s more general phenomenology of

being as carried over from his magnum opus, Sein und Zeit (Being and Time).

Heidegger’s architectural thought, then, is not limited to the concepts in this 1951

essay.

Heidegger apparently understood his own thought to have advanced in

three stages. In the first, from his earliest work to the publication of Sein und Zeit,

he was concerned with the question of meaning. Specifically, of course, he was

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interested in the question of the meaning of being and in undertaking an overhaul

of traditional metaphysics. The second stage of his thought began with the

publication of Sein und Zeit and faded along with his disillusionment with the

National Socialist party (sometime between the early 1930s to the 1950s). This

stage was marked by Heidegger’s concern with truth. Major works such as “The

Origin of the Work of Art” (1935), “On the Essence of Truth” (1949), and “The

Question Concerning Technology” (1950) were penned during this stage. The third

period was characterized by a concern, on Heidegger’s part, with issues of place.6

This explicit concern with issues of place began in 1951 at the latest. It was

on August 5th of that year when Heidegger delivered a lecture to a noteworthy

audience of architects and scholars at the school of architect Hans Scharoun in

Darmstadt. This conference, an iteration of the Darmstädter Gespräche

(Darmstadt Colloquia) had been convened that year on the topic of “Mensch und

Raum” (Man and Space). It is where Heidegger presented his well-‐known essay

“Bauen Wohnen Denken” (Building Dwelling Thinking) for the first time.

Heidegger's essay exposed a dilemma with regard to what was then being referred

to as the Wohnungsfrage (the question of dwelling): Is there a shortage of

dwellings because of an existential problem, namely that humans don't know how

to dwell, or is there a shortage because of a technological problem, namely that

dwellings cannot be produced quickly enough?7

6 Adam Sharr, Heidegger for Architects, Thinkers for Architects 02 (New York: Routledge, 2007), 20. 7 Branko Mitrovic, Philosophy for Architects (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2011), 131.

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Adam Sharr, in his 2007 volume Heidegger for Architects, suggests that

Heidegger’s consideration of dwelling was to some extent a response the

requisitioning of his home during this time.8 Having been forced to resign from

teaching in 19469 after the Freiburg de-‐Nazification hearings, and having been

compelled to share his Freiburg home with several families to make room for post-‐

war refugees,10 the questions of where one belonged and whether and in what

sense someone lived somewhere – essentially philosophical dimensions of the

more logistical Wohnungsfrage – would certainly have been of personal

significance to Heidegger.

In June of 1950, after his teaching ban was “relaxed,” Heidegger delivered his

lecture “The Thing.” This was his first public appearance since de-‐Nazification.

“The Thing,” “Building Dwelling Thinking,” and another essay entitled,

“…poetically, Man dwells…” (delivered at the Bühler Höhe spa in Baden Baden)

were among Heidegger’s most explicitly architecturally themed works. They mark

the shift in his orientation from questions of truth to questions of place. In his

volume, Heidegger for Architects, Sharr treats these three essays as complementary

foundations to an understanding of Heidegger that is worth elaborating in relation

to architecture. These essays are the “most architectural,” according to Sharr,

because of the authority given therein to “immediate experience.”11

8 Adam Sharr, Heidegger for Architects, 22. 9 Ibid., 19. 10 Ibid., 21. 11 Ibid., 4.

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In addition to these essays, it is critical to mention that Heidegger’s later

ideas on architecture bear clear resemblances to his earlier work – e.g., Being and

Time (1927) or “The Origin of the Work of Art” (1935) – and that these ideas are not

reducible to the three essays. Heidegger’s 1971 essay “Art and Space,” for example,

is yet another source of his architecturally pertinent thought.

As mentioned, Heidegger identified three phases in his own work –

meaning, truth, and place. Sharr and Clark have identified three regular residences

that Heidegger may have related to most personally in articulating his

architectural views in the last of these phases. Sharr represents these primary

experiences of “dwelling” as two-‐fold: Heidegger's urban home in Freiburg-‐im-‐

Breisgau is contrasted with his rural refuge in Todtnauberg. In his review of Sharr’s

book Heidegger’s Hut, Timothy Clark points out that a third basis for Heidegger’s

experiences of dwelling is wanting of mention: Heidegger often spent time back in

his hometown of Meßkirch.12 This, after all, is where Heidegger came from and

where, at his own request, he would eventually be buried. Clark points out that

acknowledging this third residence “creates a triangle of Heideggerian bases –

rural, urban, and small town – all situated in the area of the Black Forest.”13 Of

course, the fact of this diversity of residences could easily be overemphasized. Be

that as it may, Heidegger spent much of his life at each, and he found his hut in

Todtnauberg most conducive to thought.

12 Heidegger celebrates his childhood home in his 1949 essay, “Der Feldweg.” Cf. Timothy Clark, “Can a Place Think? On Adam Sharr’s Heidegger's Hut,” Cultural Politics 4, no. 1 (2008), 103. 13 Ibid.

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The location of Heidegger’s hut – just above Todtnau and a days walk from

Freiburg – its simple layout and design, and its contrast with his life in Freiburg-‐

im-‐Breisgau has been thoroughly explored by Adam Sharr in his study. Clark

suggests, critically, that Sharr’s book evades the challenge of Heidegger's thought

by treating it as an “empirical spectacle.”14 Clark's review, titled, “Can a Place

Think?” wrestles with the suggestion that, at Todtnauberg, Heidegger's thinking

was itself emergent out of the place, as if Heidegger himself had no agency in the

matter. Clark also claims that Heidegger's notion of “earth” is crucial to the

thinker's experiences at Todtnauberg, and that Sharr underappreciates this by

reducing this notion to a “‘datum’ for personal identity.”15

Whatever the case may be, it is clear that Heidegger identified his time at

the hut as more valuable and more philosophically significant than his time at his

home in Freiburg-‐im-‐Breisgau. Heidegger’s architectural thought, whether it bears

any direct connection to his experiences in his respective homes or not, can be

applied to an understanding of those places.

AN INVENTORY OF IDEAS

With such application in mind, it will be worthwhile to take some stock of the

Heideggerian concepts that present themselves as having potentially significant

architectural resonances. In Heidegger’s thought, building and dwelling are the

most obvious candidates for insight into and reflection upon architectural issues.

Nonetheless, there are many more concepts in Heidegger’s thought that are also

14 Ibid., 105. 15 Ibid., 101.

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good candidates for sustained architectural reflection. In no particular order, this

section offers brief surveys as to the significance that such concepts may hold in

this respect.

building/dwelling

Christian Norberg-‐Schulz considers “Building Dwelling Thinking” to be

foundational for the field of architecture in bringing us back to thinking about

authentic dwelling.16 As mentioned above, Heidegger first delivered his mature

versions of these ideas to an audience of architects and others in Darmstadt in

1951. His concern then was with the then significant Wohnungsfrage, or “question

of dwelling.” It should be noted that Heidegger arleady articulated his concept of

dwelling in Being and Time, so this notion was not merely a response to the

Wohnungsfrage as a social concern in the late 1940s. Of dwelling and building in

Heidegger, Travis Anderson writes,

To dwell means to remain in a place, to make it one’s own. And to do that, one needs to build—in all the rich and subtle senses of that word and in a relationship to the elemental that transcends all practical, theoretical, or merely aesthetic relationships.17

Jeff Malpas articulates the architectural significance of dwelling in the following

way,

To dwell is to stand in such a relation of attentiveness and responsiveness, of listening and of questioning. The question of dwelling is never a question ever settled or finally resolved. To dwell is to remain in a state in which

16 Christian Norberg-‐Schulz, “Heidegger’s Thinking on Architecture,” Perspecta 20 (1983), 66-‐67. 17 Anderson, “Complicating Heidegger and the Truth of Architecture,” 77.

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what it is to dwell—and what it is to dwell here, in this place—is a question constantly put anew.18

As both of these authors point out, dwelling is a certain primordial and authentic

comportment, and it is upon such comportment that building in the truest sense

of the word depends.

space/place

As a property of being-‐in-‐the-‐world, spatiality (Räumlichkeit) is significant

architecturally.19 Heidegger’s 1971 essay "Art and Space," too, could be utilized in its

attention to the relationship between the concepts in its name.20 It is, however, the

“convergence of place and space”21 that make these concepts especially salient for

architectural reflection, since a mere piece of architecture strives to stay in the

aesthetic foreground while a place of dwelling is “near” to us even when it is

physically far from us.22

topology

Malpas insists that Heidegger’s “earlier thinking is just as topological and spatially

rich as Heidegger’s later thinking. The difference is that the earlier work is simply

not as clear about these matters as the later.” In tracing this connection, Malpas

has written Heidegger’s Topology (MIT Press, 2008). Malpas takes the term

18 Jeff Malpas, “Rethinking Dwelling: Heidegger and the Question of Place,” Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology Newsletter, 2014, http://www.arch.ksu.edu/seamon/Malpas_Heidegger_Place.htm. 19 Christian Norberg-‐Schulz, “Heidegger’s Thinking on Architecture,” 46. 20 Glen Hill, “REVIEW: Heidegger for Architects,” Architectural Theory Review 13, no. 1 (April 2008), 117. 21 Anderson, “Complicating Heidegger and the Truth of Architecture,” 72. My italics. 22 Hill, “REVIEW: Heidegger for Architects,”116.

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“topology” from Heidegger, and notes that it can be found in Heidegger’s ‘Seminar

in Le Thor 1969’, in Four Seminars (Indiana University Press, 2004).

homestead

Anderson points out that by 1942, Heidegger had begun to re-‐conceptualize the

significance of architecture in relation to other works, going so far as to suggest

that the “homestead” is the “site of all sites.”23 Anderson takes this wording from

Heidegger’s lecture course, “Hölderlin’s Hymn The Ister” (Indiana University Press,

1996).

ready-‐to-‐hand/present-‐at-‐hand

According to Anderson, the Vorhandenheit/Zuhandenheit distinction in Heidegger

is complicated by the introduction of art and architectural objects in the PHIL of

Heidegger as early as 1935-‐6.24 Anderson maps out these complications in some

detail, and has laid a groundwork for further study of the compatibility of

Heidegger’s notion of architecture with the ontological constraints of his thought.

work

"The Origin of the Work of Art" could be read for its notion of "work" and to

explore the extent to which architecture is indeed art.25

23 Anderson, “Complicating Heidegger and the Truth of Architecture.”, 77. 24 Ibid., 69. 25 Hill, “REVIEW: Heidegger for Architects,” 117.

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authenticity

Malpas is careful to trace the connection, even identification of the concept of

dwelling -‐ which only briefly appears in Sein und Zeit – with Heidegger's concept of

authenticity (Eigentlichkeit).26

technology/enframing

An analysis of Heidegger’s “The Question Concerning Technology" could show

how enframing occurs negatively in architecture, too.27

“Language is the house of Being.”

This phrase, from Heidegger’s 1946 “Letter on Humanism” is obviously a useful one

in determining the extent to which Heidegger’s architectural language is merely

metaphorical. In that essay, another architecturally suggestive phrase immediately

follows this one: “In its home man dwells.”28 Norberg-‐Schulz has actually taken

rather literally Heidegger's conception of language as the "house of being" in its

connection to architecture and dwelling, claiming that the key to architectural

authenticity is a matter of letting the language of architecture, the language of

being, speak, so that it may invite us in, and so that in it we may authentically

dwell.29

26 Malpas, “Rethinking Dwelling: Heidegger and the Question of Place.” 27 Hill, “REVIEW: Heidegger for Architects.” 28 217. 29 Christian Norberg-‐Schulz, “Kahn, Heidegger and the Language of Architecture,” Oppositions no. 18 (1979), 46.

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truth

It has been suggested that architecture, in a way unexplored even by Heidegger

himself, is foundational for him in its role of disclosing truth.30 Norberg-‐Schulz

expresses the same view, and adds with reference to Heidegger’s discussion of the

Greek temple in “The Origin of the Work of Art,” that through gathering together

an inhabited landscape, a work of architecture reveals that landscape as “what it is

in truth.”31

A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL GENEAOLOGY

Having taken account of some of the architecturally suggestive aspects of his

thought, it seemed prudent also to document and give account of some of the

work that has already been done in connecting Heidegger’s work with

architectural practice. To this end, this paper compiles a number of bibliographical

entries documenting architects and architectural theorists with whom

Heideggerian connections are either explicit or suggested. The architects and

theorists listed are arranged alphabetically by last name. The dates and countries

of origin cited are gathered from various Internet sources. This section is intended

to be a guide for further research into the Heideggerian connections that can be

made to the work of these architects and theorists. Hence, while the dates and

home-‐countries mentioned below are believed to be accurate, they are not cited

because of the ready accessibility of such biographical details and the tedium of

citing such information in each case. Furthermore, the designations “architect”

30 Anderson, “Complicating Heidegger and the Truth of Architecture,” 79. 31 Christian Norberg-‐Schulz, “Heidegger’s Thinking on Architecture.”

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and “theorist” are merely intended to designate whether the person in question

designs buildings, writes about designing buildings, or both.

Alexander, Christopher (1936 – ; Austrian) Architect, Theorist

According to Sharr, Christopher Alexander has sought to validate non-‐expert

building in a way that is consonant with Heidegger’s anti-‐academic mood.32 See,

for example, Alexander’s The Timeless Way of Building (Oxford University Press,

1977).

Frampton, Kenneth (1930 – ; British) Architect, Architectural Theorist

Malpas mentions Frampton as a theorist influenced by Heidegger, and

Miguel de Beistegui mentions Kenneth Frampton “in particular”33 in this respect.

de Beistegui claims that it is Heidegger’s “ontological interpretation of place and

regionality” which gives Frampton (and Norberg-‐Schulz) the opportunity to “call

into question aspects of modernist and postmodernist architecture.”34 Kenneth

Frampton’s anxieties over globalization are emphasized in his essay, “Towards a

Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance,” in The Anti-‐

Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture (Bay Press, 1983), and Hill has pointed out

that this work praises architects like Alvaro Siza (1933 -‐ ; Portuguese) and Carlo

Scarpa (1906-‐1978; Italian).35

32 Adam Sharr, Heidegger for Architects, 3. 33 Miguel de Beistegui, The New Heidegger (New York: Continuum, 2005), 196. 34 Ibid. 35 Hill, “REVIEW: Heidegger for Architects,” 115.

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Gehry, Frank (1929 – ; Canadian-‐American) Architect

Travis Anderson suggests that Frank Gehry has created near perfect examples of

Heidegger's understanding of architectural works.36

Harries, Karsten (1937 – ; German-‐American) Theorist

Karsten Harries is a professor of philosophy at Yale University. Sharr has noted

that Harries’ work is responding to “dwelling” and “place” and has explored the

“ethical parameters for architecture.”37 Harries’ most recent book is titled, Truth:

The Architecture of the World (gm. Wahrheit: Die Architektur der Welt (Broschiert,

2012)).

Holl, Steven (1947 – ; American) Architect, Theorist

VonderBrink has suggested that Steven Holl draws upon Heidegger's notion of

gathering in conceiving of architectural spaces.38 Sharr notes that Holl is also

responding to “dwelling” and “place,” and that Holl “discusses phenomena and

paints water colours evoking architectural experiences.”39 Some of Holl’s book

length works include Architecture Spoken (Rizzoli, 2007) and Parallax (Birkhäuser,

2000)

George Hill has referred to Holl (along with Peter Zumthor) as a

“phenomenological architect.”40

36 Anderson, “Complicating Heidegger and the Truth of Architecture,” 78. 37 Adam Sharr, Heidegger for Architects, 1. 38 David Thomas VonderBrink, “Architectural Phenomenology: Towards a Design Methodology of Person and Place” (Miami University, 2007), 10. 39 Adam Sharr, Heidegger for Architects, 1. 40 Hill, “REVIEW: Heidegger for Architects,” 115.

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Kahn, Louis (1901 – 1974; American) Architect, Theorist

After citing the importance of the thought of Merleau-‐Ponty and Bergson in the

architectural process of Louis Kahn, VonderBrink adds, "It is also evident that

Heidegger’s thoughts on language and poetry seep into Kahn’s method, even if not

explicitly. Through reading Kahn’s poetry and narratives, one can see the influence

of language on his designs and the connection to Heidegger’s notion of being-‐there

rather than being-‐thus.”41 Christian Norberg-‐Schulz, too, interprets Heidegger as a

plausible (he does not go so far as to say a necessary) supplement to understanding

Louis Kahn's message about architecture, and more specifically to understanding

the latter's posing of the question of what a building wants to be.42 He insists that

both Heidegger and Kahn understand being as unitary and take an existential

rather than abstract-‐theoretical approach to understanding the significance of

beings. Much of Kahn’s written work on architecture can be found in Louis Kahn:

Essential Texts (WW Norton & Company, 2003).

Norberg-‐Schulz, Christian (1906-‐2000; Norwegian) Architect, Theorist

Much of Norberg-‐Schulz' later work consists of illustrating and clarifying

Heideggers’ “Building Dwelling Thinking.”43 This work constitutes a Heideggerian

“turn” in former’s work and includes his Meaning in Western Architecture (Rizzoli,

1993), Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture (Academy, 1980), and

41 VonderBrink, “Architectural Phenomenology: Towards a Design Methodology of Person and Place,” 12. 42 Christian Norberg-‐Schulz, “Kahn, Heidegger and the Language of Architecture,” 29. 43 Mitrovic, Philosophy for Architects, 138.

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The Concept of Dwelling (Rizzoli, 1993).

Norberg-‐Schulz, through Heidegger, contributed an account of the

architectural relationship between space and place. (140-‐141). As Mitrovic puts it:

[T]he Heidegger-‐derived discussion of place did enable Norberg-‐Schulz to describe the problems that derive from the facelessness of modernist architecture and its impact on the urban environment. At the time he was writing, the global impact of modernist architecture on the urban environment was becoming painfully obvious, and the modernist urban interventions often led to the destruction of what people called place.44

Indeed, it seems that for Norberg-‐Schulz, dwelling is an “antidote to modernity.”45

Christian Norberg-‐Schulz’ appropriation of Heidegger in his account of

place and identity have had further influences on the interpretations of the work

of Frank Lloyd Wright (1867 – 1969; American) and Louis Kahn.46

The most explicit and well-‐known appropriator of Heideggerian thought to

architectural theory, Norberg-‐Schulz was responding most prominently to

Heidegger’s notions of “dwelling” and “place”47 – he even takes "The Origin of the

Work of Art" as his primary Heideggerian example in his 1983 essay “Heidegger's

Thinking on Architecture” – and his work is also deeply concerned with “spirit of

place” and how Heideggerian thought may aid in thinking such a notion

through.48

44 Ibid., 141. 45 Malpas, “Rethinking Dwelling: Heidegger and the Question of Place.” 46 Hill, “REVIEW: Heidegger for Architects,” 115. 47 Adam Sharr, Heidegger for Architects, 1. 48 Ibid.

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Pallasmaa, Juhani (1936 -‐ ; Finnish) Theorist

Juhani Pallasmaa has written The Eyes of the Skin. Architecture and the Senses.

(Wiley, 2005), wherein he, too, is responding to Heidegger’s notions of “dwelling”

and “place.”49

St. John Wilson, Colin (1922-‐2007; British) Architect, Theorist

Colin St. John Wilson, via his Heidegger-‐influenced work such as The Other

Tradition of Modern Architecture: The Uncompleted Project (Black Dog Publishing,

1995), has “canonized” the work of architects such as Alvar Alto (1898 – 1976;

Finnish), Gunnar Asplund (1885 – 1940; Swedish) Hans Scharoun (1893-‐1972;

German).50

Vesely, Dalibor (1934 – ; Czech) Theorist

A student of Hans-‐Georg Gadamer (Gadamer was a student of Heidegger), Vesely

is another theorist who has responded to Heidegger’s notions of “dwelling” and

“place.” He has done so in taking up the relationship between architecture and

hermeneutics and with his notion of a “crisis of representation.”51

Zumthor, Peter (1943 -‐ ; Swiss) Architect, Theorist

Referred to as a “phenomenological architect” by George Hill (along with Steven

Holl),52 Peter Zumthor is yet another architectural theorist who can be understood

as responding critically to Heidegger’s notion’s of “dwelling” and “place,” taking

49 Ibid. 50 Hill, “REVIEW: Heidegger for Architects,” 115. 51 Adam Sharr, Heidegger for Architects, 1. 52 Hill, “REVIEW: Heidegger for Architects,” 115.

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them up in particular to deal with the “atmospheric potential of spaces and

materials.”53

CONCLUSION

Miguel de Beistegui concludes a thought-‐provoking appendix to his book The New

Heidegger by asking, “Does architecture free a space for existence, or does it force

it to become a thing, in a world where there is space (and time) for things only?”54

This question is one that Heidegger’s thought challenges us to answer. The

tendency to view the objects with which we deal every day as primarily theoretical

objects and only secondarily objects of use is seen as a mistake in thinking that

Heidegger’s thought aims to correct.

Praxis, according to Heidegger, derives from theory and not vice versa. This

suggestion is not innocent. It carries with it a sense that knowledge is an

abstraction from dwelling. Further, “dwelling on” theoretical propositions is in a

sense an abstraction from having a home. To be incorrigibly theoretical is to be

homeless; to be ontically fixated is to be homeless. These, though, are just some of

the non-‐metaphorical senses in which Heidegger’s thought can challenge

architectural thinking to seek new foundations.

With Christian Norberg-‐Schulz, I agree that Heidegger's architectural

thought is “of great immediate interest,”55 but one should neither overlook his

potentially dangerous and alienating provincialism nor be too quick to take his

53 Adam Sharr, Heidegger for Architects, 1. 54 Beistegui, The New Heidegger, 197. 55 Christian Norberg-‐Schulz, “Heidegger’s Thinking on Architecture,” 67.

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language literally in appropriating it to architectural projects. This paper should

lay some foundations for exploring Heidegger’s thought in this way.

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Works Cited:

Adam Sharr. Heidegger for Architects. Thinkers for Architects 02. New York: Routledge, 2007.

Alberti, Leon Battista. Momus. Edited by Virginia Brown and Sarah Knight. Translated by Sarah Knight. The I Tatti Renaissance Library ITRL 8. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003.

Anderson, Travis T. “Complicating Heidegger and the Truth of Architecture.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 69, no. 1 (February 02, 2011): 69–79. doi:10.1111/j.1540-‐6245.2010.01448.x.

Beistegui, Miguel de. The New Heidegger. New York: Continuum, 2005.

Christian Norberg-‐Schulz. “Heidegger’s Thinking on Architecture.” Perspecta 20 (1983): 61–68.

———. “Kahn, Heidegger and the Language of Architecture.” Oppositions no. 18 (1979): 28–47.

Clark, Timothy. “Can a Place Think? On Adam Sharr’s Heidegger's Hut.” Cultural Politics 4, no. 1 (2008): 100–122.

Heidegger, Martin. “Building Dwelling Thinking.” In Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings, edited by David Farrell Krell, translated by Albert Hofstadter, 343–364. 2nd ed. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1993.

Hill, Glen. “REVIEW: Heidegger for Architects.” Architectural Theory Review 13, no. 1 (April 2008): 115–118. doi:10.1080/13264820801918330.

Malpas, Jeff. “Rethinking Dwelling: Heidegger and the Question of Place.” Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology Newsletter, 2014. http://www.arch.ksu.edu/seamon/Malpas_Heidegger_Place.htm.

Mitrovic, Branko. Philosophy for Architects. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2011.

VonderBrink, David Thomas. “Architectural Phenomenology: Towards a Design Methodology of Person and Place.” Miami University, 2007.

Tracing Heidegger’s Influence on Architecture

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