systematicity is. Until systematicity is adequately systematicity. Most contributors to these debates have clarified, we cannot know whether classical paid little or no attention to the alleged empirical.

Introducing the building project -- Building law on a solid foundation : the eternal law -- Discovering the framework : the natural law -- Examining the framework : the content of the natural law -- Consulting the architect when problems arise : the divine law -- Decorating the structure : the art of making human law -- Appointing a foreman : the basis of authority and obligation -- Falling OV the frame : the limits of legal authority -- The point (...) of the structure : justice and the causes of law -- The reality of the art (not the science) of law. (shrink)

Fodor and Pylyshyn (1988) argue that any successful model of cognition must use classical architecture; it must depend upon rule-based processing sensitive to constituent structure. This claim is central to their defense of classical AI against the recent enthusiasm for connectionism. Connectionist nets, they contend, may serve as theories of the implementation of cognition, but never as proper theories of psychology. Connectionist models are doomed to describing the brain at the wrong level, leaving the classical view to (...) account for the mind.This paper considers whether recent results in connectionist research weigh against Fodor and Pylyshyn's thesis. The investigation will force us to develop criteria for determining exactly when a net is capable of systematic processing. Fodor and Pylyshyn clearly intend their thesis to affect the course of research in psychology. I will argue that when systematicity is defined in a way that makes the thesis relevant in this way, the thesis is challenged by recent progress in connectionism. (shrink)

There is fast-growing awareness of the role atmospheres play in architecture. Of equal interest to contemporary architectural practice as it is to aesthetic theory, this 'atmospheric turn' owes much to the work of the German philosopher Gernot Böhme. Atmospheric Architectures: The Aesthetics of Felt Spaces brings together Böhme's most seminal writings on the subject, through chapters selected from his classic books and articles, many of which have hitherto only been available in German. This is the only translated version authorised by (...) Böhme himself, and is the first coherent collection deploying a consistent terminology. It is a work which will provide rich references and a theoretical framework for ongoing discussions about atmospheres and their relations to architectural and urban spaces. Combining philosophy with architecture, design, landscape design, scenography, music, art criticism, and visual arts, the essays together provide a key to the concepts that motivate the work of some of the best contemporary architects, artists, and theorists: from Peter Zumthor, Herzog & de Meuron and Juhani Pallasmaa to Olafur Eliasson and James Turrell. With a foreword by Professor Mark Dorrian and an afterword by Professor David Leatherbarrow,, the volume also includes a general introduction to the topic, including coverage of it history, development, areas of application and conceptual apparatus. (shrink)

Architecture is a philosophical puzzle. Although we spend most of our time in buildings, we rarely reflect on what they mean or how we experience them. With some notable exceptions, they have generally struggled to be taken seriously as works of art compared to painting or music and have been rather overlooked by philosophers. In On Architecture , Fred Rush argues this is a consequence of neglecting the role of the body in architecture. Our encounter with a building is first (...) and foremost a bodily one; buildings are lived-in, communal spaces and their construction reveals a lot about our relation to the environment as a whole. Drawing on examples from architects classic and contemporary such as Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, and exploring the significance of buildings in relation to film and music and philosophers such as Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, Fred Rush argues that philosophical reflection on building can tell us something important about the human condition. (shrink)

This paper explores the difference between Connectionist proposals for cognitive a r c h i t e c t u r e a n d t h e s o r t s o f m o d e l s t hat have traditionally been assum e d i n c o g n i t i v e s c i e n c e . W e c l a i m t h a t t h (...) e m a j o r d i s t i n c t i o n i s t h a t , w h i l e b o t h Connectionist and Classical architectures postulate representational mental states, the latter but not the former are committed to a symbol-level of representation, or to a ‘language of thought’: i.e., to representational states that have combinatorial syntactic and semantic structure. Several arguments for combinatorial structure in mental representations are then reviewed. These include arguments based on the ‘systematicity’ of mental representation: i.e., on the fact that cognitive capacities always exhibit certain symmetries, so that the ability to entertain a given thought implies the ability to entertain thoughts with semantically related contents. We claim that such arguments make a powerful case that mind/brain architecture is not Connectionist at the cognitive level. We then consider the possibility that Connectionism may provide an account of the neural (or ‘abstract neurological’) structures in which Classical cognitive architecture is implemented. We survey a n u m b e r o f t h e s t a n d a r d a r g u m e n t s t h a t h a v e b e e n o f f e r e d i n f a v o r o f Connectionism, and conclude that they are coherent only on this interpretation. (shrink)

During the last decades, many cognitive architectures (CAs) have been realized adopting different assumptions about the organization and the representation of their knowledge level. Some of them (e.g. SOAR [35]) adopt a classical symbolic approach, some (e.g. LEABRA[ 48]) are based on a purely connectionist model, while others (e.g. CLARION [59]) adopt a hybrid approach combining connectionist and symbolic representational levels. Additionally, some attempts (e.g. biSOAR) trying to extend the representational capacities of CAs by integrating diagrammatical representations and reasoning (...) are also available [34]. In this paper we propose a reflection on the role that Conceptual Spaces, a framework developed by Peter G¨ardenfors [24] more than fifteen years ago, can play in the current development of the Knowledge Level in Cognitive Systems and Architectures. In particular, we claim that Conceptual Spaces offer a lingua franca that allows to unify and generalize many aspects of the symbolic, sub-symbolic and diagrammatic approaches (by overcoming some of their typical problems) and to integrate them on a common ground. In doing so we extend and detail some of the arguments explored by G¨ardenfors [23] for defending the need of a conceptual, intermediate, representation level between the symbolic and the sub-symbolic one. In particular we focus on the advantages offered by Conceptual Spaces (w.r.t. symbolic and sub-symbolic approaches) in dealing with the problem of compositionality of representations based on typicality traits. Additionally, we argue that Conceptual Spaces could offer a unifying framework for interpreting many kinds of diagrammatic and analogical representations. As a consequence, their adoption could also favor the integration of diagrammatical representation and reasoning in CAs. (shrink)

The use of the computer metaphor has led to the proposal of mind architecture (Pylyshyn 1984; Newell 1990) as a model of the organization of the mind. The dualist computational model, however, has, since the earliest days of psychological functionalism, required that the concepts mind architecture and brain architecture be remote from each other. The development of both connectionism and neurocomputational science, has sought to dispense with this dualism and provide general models of consciousness – a uniform cognitive architecture –, (...) which is in general reductionist, but which retains the computer metaphor. This paper examines, in the first place, the concepts of mind architecture and brain architecture, in order to evaluate the syntheses which have recently been offered. It then moves on to show how modifications which have been made to classical functionalist mind architectures, with the aim of making them compatible with brain architectures, are unable to resolve some of the most serious problems of functionalism. Some suggestions are given as to why it is not possible to relate mind structures and brain structures by using neurocomputational approaches, and finally the question is raised of the validity of reductionism in a theory which sets out to unite mind and brain architectures. (shrink)

Architecture and Deconstruction Case of Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi -/- Introduction Towards deconstruction in architecture Intensive relations between philosophical deconstruction and architecture, which were present in the late 1980s and early 1990s, belong to the past and therefore may be described from a greater than before distance. Within these relations three basic variations can be distinguished: the first one, in which philosophy of deconstruction deals with architectural terms but does not interfere with real architecture, the second one, in which (...) a collaboration between Jacques Derrida and a group of architects interested in his concepts is commenced, and the third one, in which completed or only designed objects or new concepts of deconstruction created by architects gain their supremacy over philosophy. The following book analyses these three possible ways, first of all with the reference to Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi. -/- Peter Eisenman -/- Misreading… and Other Errors -/- The issue of relations between Peter Eisenman’s work and philosophy of deconstruction may be referred to his activity more than ten years preceding his direct collaboration with Jacques Derrida (in 1985) and organisation of the exhibition Deconstructivist Architecture at Museum of Modern Art in New York (in 1988). As soon as at the stage of designing the first houses (House I-III, 1967-1970), which almost entirely inscribed in formalistic aesthetics of Modernism, the architect analysed the problem of architecture dependence on its assumptions. All his later designs may be treated as consequence of this initial interest in relations between practice and theory, and at the same time as an introduction to manipulations later on led at the level of metaphysics of architecture. Beginning with the issue of presence, considered in comments to House VI (1972), the number of ideas having their analogies in philosophy of deconstruction increased. The text entitled The End of the Classical: The End of the Beginning, The End of the End (1984), in which Eisenman criticised questions of representation in architecture, its delusive strive for truth and comparably unattainable attempts at ultimate definition of elementary rules, should be acclaimed the breaking point. This attitude was extended by numerous strategies disturbing architecture rules defined at metaphysical level in an essay Moving Arrows, Eros, and Other Errors: an Architecture of Absence (1986). The issue of Eisenman’s passage from formalism to deconstruction has already been much discussed in the literature (Rosalind Krauss, Thomas Patin among others), still it should be mentioned that the threads similar to Derrida’s concept included in Eisenman’s writing reveal untranslatability of architecture and philosophy. -/- Choral Works or Separate tricks -/- In 1985-1986 a series of seven disputes between Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman took place. The pretext for them were designs concerning Parc de la Villette in Paris. The situation of many months of collaboration between a notable philosopher of the second half of the 20th c. and an architect that already had a huge theoretical oeuvre, ended up with a publication of a large volume entitled Chora L Works and it became at the same time a vast study area for historians of contemporary architecture and philosophers. Derrida’s contribution to concept works were his considerations over the idea of chôra, the properties related to this concept were about to be reflected in shapes of the park. Therefore, Chora L Works became an example of the abilities of contemporary art, both in its capability of translation from philosophical ideas to artistic forms and its resistance to tradition of representing in architecture some phenomena and values originating outside this discipline. In the final period of their collaboration both interlocutors started to polemicise with each other more decidedly, what became a separate part of their thought exchange. The exchange of letters between Derrida and Eisenman at the turn of 1989 ended up the period of their direct contacts, nevertheless, at this time precisely a large group of experts in issues of deconstruction joined the discussion and extended the revealed in the former dispute problems into more than ten years of further considerations and publications. Except for a long text by Jeffrey Kipnis, who had participated in the meetings of the philosopher and the architect, there appeared also comments of researchers of artistic theories (K. Michael Hays, Thomas Patin), philosophers (Andrew Benjamin), and even experts in Greek literature (Maria Theodorou or Ann Bergren). Following these debates a contemporary reflection on architecture has saturated with indeed numerous concepts originating in philosophy of deconstruction. -/- Architecture which imitates mute philosophy -/- The series of Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman meetings, which took place in the period of 1985-1987, induced many authors to make comments. Some of them (Jeffrey Kipnis, Ann Bergren, Maria Theodorou) developed the subject of chôra which was introduced to the discussion by Derrida. The problem that was about to be solved was the question of tying up the concept of chôra with architecture, including Eisenman’s architecture and the series of meetings within frames of Chora L Works project. Kipnis on this occasion paid attention to chôra and its character of anachronia which infects any being created within chôra. In other words any event has its counterpart (analogon) in another, earlier event. He demonstrated the similarity of structure of many events and statements from the times of Derrida and Eisenman’s meetings to the almost identical behaviour of figures in Plato’s dialogue Timaeus. The loss of beginning present in this phenomenon was appropriate to both features of chôra and the effects of typical analyses of philosophy of deconstruction. Bergren’s analyses focused on accentuating gender of chôra, which, according to this author, had been neglected hitherto in discussions. She collated chôra descriptions with characteristics of women in myths, early Greek epic and philosophy and she arrived at a conclusion that chôra has features of a single woman and a married one at the same time. And yet Theodorou’s studies showed that in the Homeric epics chôra is not treated as an idea but is related with single things and events. The other part of the comments (represented by Andrew Benjamin and K. Michael Hays’ utterances) concerns Eisenman’s attitude to tradition which was treated as a variety of iteration understood philosophically. Benjamin commenced his considerations at the point of closeness between a definition of tradition and a concept of chôra understood as perpetuation (placement). A problematic issue was for him Eisenman’s complex relation to tradition based on its contest and affirmation at the same time. Overcoming the simple subordination to tradition – according to Benjamin – was based on awareness of the role of repetition in culture not known before. Hays made an attempt to explain the pleasure and torment of repetition with the support of Sigmund Freud and Roland Barthes’ concepts. According to Hays repetitions are attempts of a single being to a certain primal state perceived as free of any tension. In a similar way Rosalind Krauss explained a motif of a grate present in Modernistic art and also exceptionally frequent in Eisenman’s work. -/- Annex Architecture is still writing Balzac novels. Peter Eisenman and literature -/- Architecture’s approach to writing, script or literature, present within Peter Eisenman’s work, is an exceptional phenomenon, furthermore a complex one. The article considers four possible relations. The first one relates to Eisenman’s characteristics as a person extremely gifted with the ability to wordplay, which very ‘play’ reveals skills to create architectural images. In the second approach the attention has been paid to Eisenman’s interests – in the first period of his oeuvre – in linguistic works by Noam Chomsky and his transformational-generative grammar. The third kind of relations applied to overcoming the need for autonomy of architecture (and of modernist aesthetics at the same time) and renew interests in questions of meaning in architecture. The fourth sort of relations occurred when Eisenman started to create reflections of historic or literary narrations in architecture – ‘stone stories’ and architectural fictions of their kind. -/- Bernard Tschumi -/- From perversion to deconstruction In Bernard Tschumi’s writings from the 1970s and 1980s we can find a transposition of important threads of post-structuralist ideas deriving from Georges Bataille, Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida’s works. The analysis of the architect’s writings also shows roots in Phillippe Sollers, Michel Foucault and Denis Hollier’s works. The analysis of borrowed elements from the beginnings of Tschumi’s theoretical activity may be helpful in explaining the contents of his later writings motre inspired by philosophy of deconstruction. The set of his earliest views was inspired by Marxism, Neo Marxism and French Structuralism, mainly by the writings of Henri Levebre and Guy Debord. From the thought of Levebre Tschumi took interest for city as not only a question of urbanistics but also a political issue. From Debord’s concepts he borrowed a conviction about the role of situational violation for changes in the society structure. Some of these beliefs were preserved in his own concepts of architecture as an event. From this period derived also his will to change conservative elements of social structure not by means of political revolution but of theoretical and creative activity. Tschumi acknowledged that the effective way of the proceedings towards achieving his aims would be accepting the role of both a critical intellectualist and architecture expert who would not hide away his left-wing orientation. The speculations defined by the architect as ‘revolting analyses’ were about to characterise contradictions which tear the society apart, penetrate architecture and constitute the basis of culture. Spreading away of the conscience of false assumptions hidden away in various disciplines could have weakened cohesion of a conservative society and influence the will to change among the elites. This way the beginnings of political revolution were rooted in philosophy of architecture. In 1977 Tschumi published his text entitled The Pleasure of Architecture inspired by Roland Barthes’s The Pleasure of the Text, it also included some concepts derived from Georges Bataille and Jacques Derrida. First of all the author used Barthes’s concept which made an assumption that literary activity is pervaded by the spirit of resistance towards social rules, and Tschudi transferred this remark onto architecture. From the ideas of Bataille, acquainted via Holier’s work, he derived his belief that two concepts of space, a conceptual one (defined as Pyramid) and a sensual one (defined as Labirynth), not losing their distinct features, they join in the concept of experienced space which exceeds contradictions. The exceeding itself was defined as the basic rule of architecture and it was referred to situations in which architecture not only negates social needs, but also disavows its own tradition. Crossing the borders applies not only to political issues or permanent rules of the very discipline but also interfering with other fields (especially literature and film). The fact that architecture is associated with organising events turned Tschumi’s attention to questions of violence that result from upsetting architectural order of a given building by its users and the one hand, and on the other from forcing the users to specific acts imposed by this very order. The analysis of the concepts used by Tschumi in his early writings indicates that they are close to definitions that would occur in his reflection in the following years influenced by philosophy of deconstruction. -/- Approaching deconstruction Tschumi in his theories developed in the 1980s presumed that the current social world had undergone a deep process of decay, and the reaction against which ought to be based on ordering-up actions, and also preserving the main outline of disintegration of the whole and its elements in the state of conflict. The statements concerning the nature of the contemporary to Tschumi social relations were applied by him to the world of architecture, this led him to coming up with designing strategies that took into consideration the destabilised character of conditions in which works of architecture were created. New ways of conduct invented by Tschumi drew their inspiration from literature and research on literature, psychoanalysis, structural linguistics, structuralism and post structuralism, and eventually also deconstruction philosophy. The proposed methods were opposed by their author both to functionalism continuity trends and postmodern architecture. Tschumi’s proposals contradicted any forms of conservatism or traditionalism in political sphere as well as in reference to tendencies in architecture. They were not simple contradictions of social or architectural rules, they intrude them from the inside, weaken or escalate the already existing incongruities, they move the boundaries between the areas. Revolutionary illusions about the possibility of radical changes were replaced with strategies which completed, tainted or test former rules in the series of formal games of permutation and combination. Quite different from avant-garde formalism Tschumi’s games were not about maintaining the autonomy of a given area, but on the contrary – polluting it with other areas’ influences. Tschumi enjoyed demonstrating illusions of architecture concerning simple relations between form and function, or between form and meaning. Making use of Freud, Lacan and Foucault’s research he introduced a category of “madness” into architecture allowing an observation that the recognised norms are nothing but merely ones of many possible principles of behaviour, and their recognised status resulted from unjustified hindering innovativeness which is crucial for architecture. To reborn architecture’s capability of changing Tschumi also made use of Barthes’s discoveries concerning rules of narration and works by writers who applied in their writing knowledge on linguistics. Making a work’s author unclear by various mechanical transformations of its elements was however apparent only, and formal rigours imposed on the process of designing liberated possibilities difficult to obtain in more traditional creative action. Another mode of acting introduced by Tschumi was combining his work of elements deriving from outside architecture; joining space records with notation of motion and events accompanying architectural objects among others. These architectural and extra-architectural elements were not unified, on the contrary their heterogenous and conflictual character was stressed. This is how shock, anxiety and instability, typical for live in great metropolises, infiltrated architecture. Taking some ideas of deconstruction philosophy as a pattern Tschumi also took into critical consideration in his essays traditional in architecture oppositions between form and figuration, or theory and practice. By combining various inspirations he eventually worked out an idea of architectural event, which he understood as a series of actions contesting its own field, redefining its sources, principles and elements. An event, understood in this way, was not so much producing works as rather creating conditions of their production and at the same time designing the society different from a hierarchic one. -/- Park of deconstruction Among numerous philosophical strategies of deconstruction most frequently used was questioning the practice of strong opposition of two reasons. In many cases Bernard Tschumi’s writings just consider functioning of the conflict juxtaposition of the ideas of structure and ornament or theory and practice in history of architecture. Violation of traditional relations between terms of this kind, both old and modern, raised Jacques Derrida’s objections, when he was induced for the first time to co-operate with architects’ milieu. During this long lasting thought exchange the philosopher eventually acknowledged Bernard Tschumi’s arguments for reasoning the encroachment of architecture’s fundamental rules. Deconstruction applied in architecture was not a simple transposition or analogy of practices that had been applied by philosophy of deconstruction. We may even say that considering architectural terms became an important formula of deconstruction. Architecture understood in philosophical way became something beyond the practice and theory of its own discipline, a sort of metaphysics of both philosophy and architecture. The deliberate encroachment of simplicity of dividing architecture into theory and practice, for the first time became a clear aim for Tschumi in his drawings and texts entitled The Manhattan Transcripts. The contents of this series of works was a record of characteristic features of this New York district in such a way that not only objects were the subject of the record but also relations between objects, people and events. The record was about to take into consideration a conflict character of elements of this representation and at the same time to avoid applying to them the rule of mimetism. The record became a form of reflection over the very record by an increased control over the ways of representation. Architecture which was considered in the The Manhattan Transcripts was not directed to fulfill the needs of inhabitation or production, it was rather related with hitherto usually marginalised liminal situations: building ostentatiously big monuments, religious cult, war etc. Architecture operating in these relations focused also the attention on the included in it continuous tendency to overpass its own restrictions, the role of violence as its not recognised factor, or the meaning of excess and shock in its operation. Architecture moving from reason towards madness became even more visible in the design of Parisian Parc de la Villette, whose pavilions were defined as folies (in French it means both small park buildings and follies). The park was supposed to be on the one hand a reflection of traditional society disintegration while on the other it questioned basic rules of producing a work of architecture. The traditional rules of designing, based on ordering up, were replaced with the strategies of dysfunction and dissociation. In Tschumi’s opinion methods of this kind may be equivalent of what Derrida named différance. Instead of aiming at mergence, any diversity, plays or variations were strengthen. Tschumi’s texts, in which he explained his attitude, were completed by Derrida’s extent statement entitled Point de folie – Maintenant l’architecture. Derrida’s article is the most significant of all his statements on architecture as a form of thinking and activity. According to the philosopher, architecture should divide space (in French defined as espacement), what enables both thinking and action – it arranges the space of an event. Tschumi’s buildings, defined as folies, in an essential way destabilise any created order, and at the same time they refresh it. Derrida’s statement suggests that architecture may become both metaphor of an order merging a language or a society but also of inner forces which deconstruct and reconstruct it. Therefore architecture is at the same time a construction, a deconstruction and a reconstruction. Parc de la Villette stands out in this system with its attempt to step beyond the scheme of an easy repetition and its heading for chances of achieving more radical otherness. -/- Conclusion Destruction as construction. Paradoxes of deconstruction in architecture -/- Scepticism about persistence and common importance of fundamental values of human culture evinced in philosophers and writers’ works as early as in Greek antiquity, nevertheless it was not expressed so strongly as in the second half of the 20th century. Especially in Heidegger’s work Being and Time (although originated in 1927, still influential in all later philosophy) the following states were characterised: the state of losing the ground (Abgrund), of being out of sight (Unheimlichkeit) and of being out of dwelling (Un-zuhause-sein) – as the basis of self-confidence of conscious being there (Dasein). The entire criticism of philosophy of home and dwelling draws the inspiration from this early writing of the German philosopher, it combines crisis of basic terms of metaphysics with social conditions which are dictated by living in large metropolis. The crisis of both metaphysical foundation and home appears to be similar to the situation of weakening the relations between a man and his dwelling in extensively expanding cities. Whereas philosophy, as well as many disciplines of social sciences, have diagnosed for a long time the destabilisation of fundamental ideas of Western culture and crucial changes in the ways of dwelling, architecture itself occurred to be “the last fortress of metaphysics” (J. Derrida). Among contemporary architects, Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi were the ones who engaged most decidedly in the issues of critical analysis of architecture foundation and its social role. Both the architects noticed new formulas of contemporary social and individual existence, tremendously different from the entire history, and at the same time they affirmed lack of adequacy of architecture concepts to new situations. Both Eisenman and Tschumi used to describe the existing architecture as a tool for consolidation of highly integrated and hierarchised societies, and also as a discipline extremely uncoincidental with the current character of social life based on ideas of freedom and diversity. The means to transform architecture and make a factor of further social changes out of it, was a concept that accentuated revealing the inner contradictions of this discipline, and considering them in designing strategies. Eisenman’s activity, in regard of what has just been noticed, was focused on questioning the basic rules of traditionally comprehended architecture, especially the rule of purpose. The American architect noticed that the concept of architecture as fulfilment the need of location, hides away the fact that the location has to be constantly reconsidered, and hence it is overtaken by change (dislocation). Therefore new concept of architecture propounded architectural activity to translocate the concept of location – more than before – but also to change its status perpetually. Such comprehended architecture should claim, as its main purpose, the constant revision of this purpose and create itself anew permanently. Even Eisenman’s earliest designs of houses nos. I-IV broke with such values as the sense of safety, closeness and familiarity, and just on the contrary they accentuated senses of strangeness, homelessness and loss of confidence. The contradictions within architecture noticed by Tschumi referred to combination of intellectual and sensual values in architecture, when their non-appropriation was defeated by an additional condition, namely the way of experience based on pleasure of excess, marked by insanity. The features of folly were especially visible in his designs of gardens, where the order of planning was mixed with sensual experience introduced by particular elements (both the ones created by nature, and the buildings defined as folies). Parc de la Villette designed by the French architect in Paris put in question not only the common understanding of purpose in architecture but also the ideas of order and integrity, as its plan was based on the combination of independent layers with records of grids of points, various lines and planes. The architecture that collides inadequate elements with each other was supposed to be a kind of an event with no beginning and no end. The architecture treated as an event became a form of a space weakened articulation that maintains its diversity and lack of accordance of the elements building it up. The analyses of Eisenman and Tschumi’s theoretical writings indicate how much the aims of architecture have actually changed; instead of supporting social persistence, the architecture is rather intensifying contradictions, and instead of providing people with the sense of safety, it sublimes danger. From simple acts of defamiliarisation, increasing the distance to itself and enhancing the role of theory, through discomfort, anxiety, not feeling someone at home, weirdness, excess, shock and violence, architecture reached the edge of stability and uncertainty, only to make an attempt at penetrating what is impossible and unutterable, and recording what cannot become the subject of any records. -/- . (shrink)

This paper presents a review and an historical perspective on the architectural metaphor. It identifies common characteristics and peculiarities—as they apply to given historical periods—and analyses the similarities and divergences. The review provides a vocabulary, which will facilitate an appreciation of existing and new metaphors.

This book explores the shared experiential ground of cinema, art, and architecture. Pallasmaa carefully examines how the classic directors Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Andrei Tarkovsky used architectural imagery to create emotional states in their movies. He also explores the startling similarities between the landscapes of painting and those of movies.

According to the classic view of architecture, its primary function is to create spatial law and order so as to improve the functioning of man in the architectural environment. Classical works on the theory of architecture focused on those qualities that portrayed architecture as having a clearly positive dimension, the pursuit of which should be the primary task of an architect. Is it true, however, that architecture has only one common meaning? This assertion is undermined by buildings constructed on (...) borderlands, which are imposed on one community by another. An example is the wall being erected by Israel since 2002 to separate the state from the West Bank. While it has become a symbol of security and order for the Israelis, it is an emblem of enslavement and chaos for the Palestinians who have been trapped on the other side of the barrier. (shrink)

This article tackles an old, classical problem, which is acquiring a new epochal relevance with the techno-aesthetic processing of form and substance, expression and content. The field of digital architecture is embarked in the ancient controversy between the line and the curve, binary communication and fuzzy logic. Since the 1990s, the speculative qualities of digital architecture have exposed spatial design to the qualities of growing or breeding, rather than planning. However, such qualities still deploy the tension between discrete spaces (...) and continual curving. In this context, the article suggests the computational coexistence of discrete coding with continual morphing, defying any easy resolution for an aesthetic of continuity or discontinuity, the superiority of the analog or the meta-logic of the digital. The metaphysical dimension of such coexistence needs to include the abstract capacities of experiencing the transition from one state to another as the registering of algorithmic processing. Computation is intrinsic to microperceptions, incomputable quantities deploying the infectious property of the digital code. The article draws on the digital architecture of Greg Lynn to explore whether the computational nature of the digital calculus has the potential to challenge the bifurcation between the biological and the mathematical, the physical and the mental. (shrink)

Quantum probability (QP) theory provides an alternative account of empirical phenomena in decision making that classical probability (CP) theory cannot explain. Cognitive architectures combine probabilistic mechanisms with symbolic knowledge-based representations (e.g., heuristics) to address effects that motivate QP. They provide simple and natural explanations of these phenomena based on general cognitive processes such as memory retrieval, similarity-based partial matching, and associative learning.

Compositionality has been a central concept in linguistics and philosophy for decades, and it is increasingly prominent in many other areas of cognitive science. Its status, however, remains contentious. Here, I reassess the nature and scope of the principle of compositionality (Partee, 1995) from the perspective of psycholinguistics and cognitive neuroscience. First, I review classic arguments for compositionality and conclude that they fail to establish compositionality as a property of human language. Next, I state a new competence argument, acknowledging the (...) fact that any competent user of a language L can assign to most expressions in L at least one meaning which is a functiononlyof the meanings of the expression's parts and of its syntactic structure. I then discuss selected results from cognitive neuroscience, indicating that the human brain possesses the processing capacities presupposed by the competence argument. Finally, I outline a language processing architecture consistent with the neuroscience results, where semantic representations may be generated by a syntax‐driven streamandby an “asyntactic” processing stream, jointly or independently. Compositionality is viewed as a constraint on computation in the former stream only. (shrink)

Why do some types of settings and some combinations of sensory information induce a sense of dread in humans? This article brings empirical evidence from psychological research to bear on the experience of horror, and explains why the tried-and-true horror devices intuitively employed by writers and filmmakers work so well. Natural selection has favored individuals who gravitated toward environments containing the “right” physical and psychological features and avoided those which posed a threat. Places that contain a bad mix of these (...) features induce unpleasant feelings of dread and fear, and therefore have become important ingredients of the settings for horror fiction and films. This article ap­plies McAndrew and Koehnke’s theory of creepiness to the study of classic horror settings and explores the role played by architecture, isolation, association with death, and other environmental qualities in the experience of creepiness and dread. (shrink)

This pioneering book presents a reconstitution of Charles Sanders Peirce philosophical system as a coherent architecture of concepts that form a unified theory of reality. Historically, the majority of Peircean scholars adopted a thematic approach to study isolated topics such as semiotics and pragmatism without taking into account the author’s broader philosophical framework, which led to a poor and fragmented understanding of Peirce’s work. In this volume, professor Ivo Assad Ibri, past president of The Charles Sanders Peirce Society and a (...) leading figure in the Brazilian community of Peircean scholars, adopts a systemic approach to Peirce’s thought and presents Peirce’s scientific metaphysics as a deep ontological architecture based on a semiotic logic and on pragmatism as criteria of meaning. Originally published in Portuguese, this book became a classic among Brazilian Peircean scholars by presenting a conceptual matrix capable of providing a clear reference system to ground the thematic studies into the broader Peircean system. Now translated to English, this reviewed, amplified and updated edition aims to make this contributions available to the international community of Peircean scholars and to serve as a tool to understand Peirce’s work in a more systemic way by integrating concepts such as experience, phenomenon, existence and reality, as well as theories such as Chance, Continuity, Objective Idealism, Cosmology and Pragmatism, in a coherent system that reveals Peirce’s complex metaphysical architecture. "As the philosophical reputation of Charles S. Peirce continues to rise to first-tier prominence in the history of American philosophy, Ivo Ibri’s Kósmos Noetós assumes a unique status in both a pioneering and a magisterial work of transcontinental Peirce scholarship. This original work of this internationally renowned scholar and editor, and Professor of Philosophy at the Pontifical Catholic University of San Paulo, penetrates to the heart of Peirce’s architectonic system of phenomenological, metaphysical, and semiotic categories which heuristically characterize our world as “a universe perfused with signs.” Ibri’s own synergistic commentary on the radiating registers of Peirce’s cosmogonically and pragmatistically conceived “one intelligible theory of the universe” also instructively contributes to the illumination of significant nodes of interface with a range of relevant theoretical trends in the contemporary academy; as well, it places Peirce in the company of such thinkers as Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Kant, and Schelling who preceded Peirce in providing a legacy of first-tier reasoning on our intelligibly developing world. Kosmos Noetos impresses as Ibri’s pure, lucid, passionately thought-loving, philosophical articulation of his own and as the indispensable prolegomena to all future Peirce studies." David Dilworth, State University of New York at Stone Brook – USA "Ivo Ibri has offered us in this exquisite work a framing of the inner logic of Charles S. Peirce's core metaphysical vision and its existential implications. It is a deep and nuanced exploration of the internal dynamics of Peirce’s central metaphysical categories, developed through rigorous and detailed attention to the evolution of Peirce’s thought on the ‘vitally important topics’ of the appearing, the reality, and the intelligibility of the world. The two-leveled format of the book, an intricate weaving of Peirce’s texts and discursive elaboration and linkage by Ibri, gives it a distinctive feel and is the bedrock of its value. The book is a remarkable combination of presentation and analysis. It is informed by Ibri’s deep philosophical culture and is a gentle and convincing argument for the centrality of metaphysics in understanding Peirce’s thought. It offers in a new way indispensable suggestions for our own attempts to think about our places in an evolving universe with the aid of Peirce and offers threads of thought to be followed up by others." Robert E. Innis, University of Massachusetts Lowell – USA. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Architectural Theory, Volume 1: An Anthology from Vitruvius to 1870Peg RawesArchitectural Theory, Volume 1: An Anthology from Vitruvius to 1870, edited by Harry Francis Mallgrave. Malden MA, Oxford, Victoria: Blackwell Publishing, 2006, 590 pp., $49.95.This anthology is a rich and comprehensive documentation of the key stages that construct Western architectural theory, from Vitruvius's classical writing to Gottfried Semper's theories in late-nineteenth-century Europe. Comprised of 229 texts by (...) these and other significant writers of architectural theory, it represents an extremely valuable resource for architectural design, history, and theory education and, more broadly, for aesthetic education, art history, aesthetics, and visual culture. Professor Mallgrave's career as an architectural historian and theorist at the Illinois Institute of Technology, and editor of Architecture and Aesthetics for the Texts and Documents Series at the Getty Research Institute, has enabled him to bring together a large number of canonical texts by architects and writers, including Alberti, Palladio, Vasari, Perrault, Wotton, Wren, Soufflot, Blondel, Boullée, Ledoux, Soane, Reynolds, Pugin, Viollet-le-Duc, Ruskin, and Greenough. In addition, Mallgrave has selected important contextualizing texts that inform the philosophical, cultural, and aesthetic development of the discipline by writers such as Rousseau, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Morris, Chambers, Winckelmann, Locke, Hume, Ramsey, Burke, Walpole, Price, von Schlegel, Wolff, Jefferson, Emerson, Hugo, Zola, and Leibnitz.Six stages of development are laid out, beginning with the Classical and Renaissance periods in part I. In part II the debates about Classicism in France and Britain develop, leading into part III, in which texts from the Neoclassical and Enlightenment debates in Europe take precedence. In part IV, Picturesque and Sublime theories are documented, from which part V turns to consider the importance of Historicism in the nineteenth century and, finally, in part VI the impact of Historicism is examined in relation to developments in industrialization.Introducing each part, Mallgrave succinctly highlights the historical, cultural, and political structures that underpin the development of architectural ideas and debates during the period. Within each part, internal sections further distinguish the particular ideas that preoccupied specific individuals and groups to comprise different theoretical positions. Part II, for example, is divided into the nationalist differences between "French Classicism: Ancients and Moderns" and "British Classicism and Palladianism," and part IV identifies key texts that contribute to the theorization of eighteenth-century aesthetics in three stages: "Sources of the Picturesque," "Toward a Relativist Aesthetics," and "Consolidation of Picturesque Theory." In addition, Mallgrave introduces each individual text, drawing attention to the author's intellectual ambitions and the contemporary debates in which their contribution is constructed. Architectural [End Page 111] theory is therefore characterized as a discipline that is made up of dynamic discussions, which are frequently unresolved and irregular in their formation. Diverse and opposing agendas are pursued, both within and between different institutions, academies, and communities, including the late-sixteenth-century "stylistic battles" of Alberti and Serlio's treatises, which were developed out of Vitruvius's ten "books" of architecture; the pluralism of styles in the United States in the mid-nineteenth century that was comprised of puritanical influential theories, Gothic and French Classicism, and the new generation of American architectural theorists; and the emergence of a German architectural theory within the political disputes that led to the unification of Germany in 1871. Architectural theory is therefore firmly constructed in relation to social, material, cultural, and political systems and frameworks.This colorful construction of architectural theory is evident, especially in those sections that are central to Mallgrave's ongoing research interests, in the tension between the rational, technical, and empirical discussions that inform seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century aesthetics. Running through parts II and III, for example, is one of the most drawn-out and bitter disputes, which dominated architectural theory in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French Academy of Architecture. Focused on the value of Vitruvius's Roman origins of Classicism, versus revivalist ambitions to retrieve the ornamental Classicism of Greek and Gothic styles, this great quarrel occupies the texts, letters, essays, and articles by architects and writers, including Blondel, Perrault, Piranesi, Soufflot, Winckelmann, Le Roy, Boullée, and Ledoux. But this debate is also important in the context of... (shrink)

Architecture is about to enter its first magical phase: a time when buildings actively co-operate with their inhabitants; when objects know what they are, where they are, what is near them; when social and physical space lose their type coupling; when wall and partitions change with mood and task. As engineers and scientists explore how to digitse the world around us, the classical constraints of design, ruled so long by the physics of space, time, and materials, are starting to (...) crumble. Documents can be laid down in one place, automatically cloned, and a copy picked up in another. Meetings scheduled for 9am to 10am can be joined by latecomers at noon, who then participate in a captured form of the event and are ‘edited into’ the past. People on the West coast of the USA can participate, in a telepresent way, with their colleagues on the East coast, and hold a meeting against a virtual backdrop, such as a production line in their Taiwanese factory. Walls seem to dematerialise, remote objects can be touched virtually, shaped, passed through one another. Technology is moving inexorably so that being in one place at a time no longer need dominate how we work and play. Material boundaries are losing their meaning, and interface and information space are catch words that architects must master. -/- In this article I will discuss some of the theoretical ideas shaping our new conception of form, function, and interactivity. My view is that of a cognitive scientist interested in how cognition is distributed throughout our environment. Since the ground rules defining the structure of environments are changing, our very idea of how we are embedded in the world is changing. Architecture is at a new frontier. (shrink)

This paper seeks to respond to two questions posed by previous commentators concerning the arrangement of Trimalchio's porticus as described in Petronius’ Satyrica (Sat. 29): first, whether the freedman's house lacked an atrium; second, whether the cursores (runners) who are described as unconventionally exercising in the portico were pictorial representations or real-life athletes who would symbolize the social incompetence of the dominus. This paper argues that nothing in the text supports the interpretation of Trimalchio's house as having an unconventional architectural (...) layout. Instead, as the narrative requires that Encolpius move quickly towards the triclinium, in his description the loca communia appear conflated, while he only sparsely notices a few relevant elements of the decor. The presentation of Trimalchio's porticus appears to have a functional rather than a simply descriptive purpose: it symbolizes both Roman contemporary practices (the loca communia as a distinctive unit within the domus) and the influence of Greek cultural habits (the characteristic association of colonnaded courtyards and athletics). The excerpt that describes the guests’ arrival at Trimalchio's house, therefore, serves an important narrative function, providing essential information about the character's origins, self-image and social life. (shrink)

The chapter’s central question is how place and memory connect so intimately and how the architecture of buildings and rooms can play such a powerful role in memory. I develop an initial answer in two steps. First, I explicate Merleau-Ponty’s argument in the passivity lectures (IP ) that, contra classical concepts of memory as purely passive recording or purely active construction, memory entails a peculiar passivity that is not, however, wholly passive. Merleau-Ponty’s argument entails some deep conceptual points about (...) the ontology of temporality and spatiality that I briefly tackle. In the second step I flesh out these ontological points in terms of a passivity granted by bodily levels and habits. This let me show how place, as that through which we move and as intrinsic to movement, also grants a passivity crucial to memory, such that our memorial activity is fringed with and draws on a passivity that is beyond us in the places we inhabit. I make sense of this by conceptualizing such passivity, specifically as granted by places through which we move, as an “I already can” that is kin to a habit—but outside us. We thus find ourselves fringed with a peculiar habit through which we find our movements already passively woven into surrounding places. I suggest that architecture works to actively articulate this fringing habit, and that, like bodily habits, this fringing habit opens our future by keeping our past going—and thus garbs our movement with our past. To move in architectural places is thus to move to one’s future through the garb of one’s past and is thence to be fringed with memory. The key to this linkage between memory and place is the passivity of memory. (shrink)

"The first of the particular arts . . . is architecture." (A 13.116/1.83)1 For Hegel, architecture stands at several beginnings. It is the art closest to raw nature. It is the beginning art in a progressive spiritualization that will culminate in poetry and music. The drive for art is spirit's drive to become fully itself by encountering itself; art makes spirit's essential reality present as an outer sensible work of its own powers.2 (A 13.453/1.351) If Hegel's narrative of the arts (...) creates a hierarchy, architecture stands lowest, yet it nonetheless plays a unique and necessary role in spirit's development. In this essay I first describe Hegel's views on the nature of architecture and its three stages (symbolic, classical, romantic). Then I indicate some problems with Hegel's narrative. Finally I raise the question whether Hegel's theories might be adapted to our present architectural situation. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to reconstruct and evaluate the main argument in Roger Scruton's book The Classical Vernacular: Architectural Principles in an Age of Nihilism.

This chapter contains sections titled: The Will and Modernity Schopenhauer's Architectonic Idealism An Argument against Hegel In Defense of Classicism Structure, Function and Form Architecture and Contemplation Notes References.

Architecture is about to enter its first magical phase: a time when buildings actively co-operate with their inhabitants; when objects know what they are, where they are, what is near them; when social and physical space lose their type coupling; when wall and partitions change with mood and task. As engineers and scientists explore how to digitse the world around us, the classical constraints of design, ruled so long by the physics of space, time, and materials, are starting to (...) crumble. Documents can be laid down in one place, automatically cloned, and a copy picked up in another. Meetings scheduled for 9am to 10am can be joined by latecomers at noon, who then participate in a captured form of the event and are ‘edited into’ the past. People on the West coast of the USA can participate, in a telepresent way, with their colleagues on the East coast, and hold a meeting against a virtual backdrop, such as a production line in their Taiwanese factory. Walls seem to dematerialise, remote objects can be touched virtually, shaped, passed through one another. Technology is moving inexorably so that being in one place at a time no longer need dominate how we work and play. Material boundaries are losing their meaning, and interface and information space are catch words that architects must master. (shrink)

Internalism and Epistemology is a powerful articulation and defense of a classical answer to an enduring question: What is the nature of rational belief? In opposition to prevailing philosophical fashion, the book argues that epistemic externalism leads, not just to skepticism, but to epistemic nihilism - the denial of the very possibility of justification. And it defends a subtle and sophisticated internalism against criticisms that have widely but mistakenly been thought to be decisive. Beginning with an internalist response to (...) the Gettier problem, the authors deal with the problem of the connection to truth, stressing the distinction between success and rationality as critical to its resolution. They develop a metaregress argument against externalism that has devastating consequences for any view according to which epistemic principles are contingent. The same argument does not, they argue, affect the version of internalism they espouse, since its epistemic principles are analytic and knowable a priori. The final chapter addresses the problem of induction and shows that its solution turns critically on the distinction between success and rationality - the very distinction that lies at the heart of the dispute between internalists and externalists. Provocative, probing, and deliberately unfashionable, Internalism and Epistemology is a ringing defense of internalism that will interest specialists and students alike. It is essential reading for anyone who suspects that rumors of the death of traditional epistemology have been greatly exaggerated. (shrink)