Architecture

This paper explores the Persistence Question about cities, that is, what is necessary and sufficient for two cities existing at different times to be numerically identical. We first show that we can possibly put an end to the existence of a city in a number of ways other than by physically destroying it, which reveals the metaphysics of cities to be partly different from that of ordinary objects. Then we focus in particular on the commonly perceived vulnerability of cities to (...) imaginary relocation; and we make the hypothesis that cities do have among their essential properties that of being surrounded by a specific geographical context. Finally we investigate the pos- sibility that a city can survive relocation in virtue of the capacity of its geographical context to survive it in the first place. We suggest that city contexts may not be essentially context-dependent in turn, and outline a possible description of the cri- teria for their persistence over time. (shrink)

The culturally pervasive tendency to identify aspects of the body as aesthetically imperfect harms individuals and scaffolds injustice related to disability, race, gender, LGBTQ+ identities, and fatness. But abandoning the notion of imperfection may not respect people’s reasonable understandings of their own bodies. I examine the prospects for a practice of aesthetic assessment grounded in a notion of the body’s function. I argue that functional aesthetic assessment, to be respectful, requires understanding the body’s functions as complex, malleable, and determined by (...) the projects and interests of the person whose body it is. Aesthetically relevant functions, on this account, are determined neither by the body’s status as organism nor by cultural assumptions about how bodies should function or be used. (shrink)

Practical Ethics in Architecture and Interior Design Practice presents the basics of design practice through ethical scenarios, ushering design students into real-world experiential learning. Each chapter begins with a detailed story involving a complicated set of practical and ethical dilemmas, exemplifying those encountered each day in the world of professional practice. Practice-based topics such as contracts and project delivery methods, marketing design services, cross-cultural collaboration, virtual connectivity, social justice and sustainable design, soft skills, and other related professional practice themes are (...) anchored in realistic scenarios. While all the stories are fictional, in writing them the authors drew from over 75 combined years of professional experience in architecture and interior design, as well as many years of academic experience in teaching professional practice and ethics to architecture and interior design students. Each story is followed by discussion questions and suggested additional resources. This book provides a unique integrated perspective into the allied fields of architecture and interior design with topics relevant to both fields as well as specific to each profession. It prepares students of both disciplines for the broad issues of professional practice and encourages them to become ethical practitioners ready to contribute effectively to design teams and to ask the right questions. (shrink)

There is a troubling trend in contemporary writing pedagogy to construe classical approaches to writing instruction "as fixed, static entities . . . produced by asymmetrical power relations that . . . reinforce oppressive or stereotypical attitudes and ideologies" (Mutnick and Lamos 25). In place of the classical tradition, progressive educators, following the lead of Paulo Freire, have championed student-centered approaches to education, in effect developing students in the service of themselves as opposed to in the service of knowledge as (...) is characteristic of classical approaches. In this article I argue against the pedagogical monism that characterizes contemporary educational models by positing an integrated model of writing instruction that builds contemporary, theory-driven frameworks on top of historically valid and progressively developed principles, using the languages of modernistic and classical architecture as a mnemonic. Using the "Palladian Arch" as a guiding image, I then close my article by describing how vertically-aligned, foundational approaches such as process pedagogy and genre and rhetorical studies relate to the horizontally-aligned, theoretical approaches that ultimately lead to the apotheosis of each student's intellectual persona. (shrink)

Mimarlık diğer sanat dallarından iki bakımdan ayrılır. İlk olarak mimari yapıtlarla etkileşim kaçınılmazdır. Müzik dinlemeden, tiyatro veya sinemaya gitmeden, resim veya heykel sergilerini gezmeden yaşamımızı sürdürebiliriz ancak mimari yapılar olmadan bu olanaklı olmaz. Bu bakımdan mimarlık sanatlar içinde belki de insan yaşamını en fazla etkileyen daldır. İkinci olarak mimarlık bir yaşam gereksinimini karşılayan, böyle bir işlevi olan belki de tek sanat dalıdır. Örneğin resim, heykel, şiir, sinema veya tiyatro yapıtlarını sanatsal açıdan değerlendirirken hangi gereksinimimizi karşıladıkları sorusunu sormayız. Buna karşılık mimari (...) yapılar barınma başta olmak üzere bir dizi maddi gereksinimimizi karşılarlar. Hangi gereksinimi karşılamak amacıyla yapıldıkları sorusu onların sanatsal açıdan değerlendirilmesinde önem taşır. Bu yazıda mimarlığın sanatlar içindeki bu iki özgünlüğünü dikkate alan bir düşünürün, Ömer Naci Soykan'ın mimarlık konusundaki görüşlerini sırasıyla “mimarlıkta temel nitelikler”, “mimarlık etkinliği”, “mimarlık dili” ve “mimarlık estetiği” başlıkları altında ele alacağız. (shrink)

Considering the impact of COVID-19 outbreak on the foundation of our socio-economic and environmental systems, it is imperative to apply multi-faceted sustainability approaches for the current and post-pandemic era. The built environment plays a key role in the spatial engagement of humans and their workspace in the urban environment. Proposing new concepts for the post-pandemic era that combine the built environment and sustainability techniques may provide an opportunity for better integration into the essence of sustainability. In this regard, this paper (...) recommends applying circular economy idea in adaptive reuse practice of industrial heritage to create circular workplaces for the post-pandemic period. As an example of this given proposal, a scheme for a textile factory in Isfahan, Iran is presented. (shrink)

The article explores the relationship between Baukunst and Zeitwille in the practice and pedagogy of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and the significance of the notions of civilization and culture for his philosophy of education and design practice. Focusing on the negation of metropolitan life and mise en scene of architectural space as its starting point, it examines how Georg Simmel’s notion of objectivity could be related to Mies’s understanding of civilization. Its key insight is to recognize that Mie’s practice (...) and pedagogy was directed by the idea that architecture should capture the driving force of civilization. The paper also summarizes the foundational concepts of Mies’s curriculum in Chicago. It aims to highlight the importance of the notions of Zeitwille and impersonality in Mies van der Rohe’s thought and to tease apart the tension between the impersonality and the role of the autonomous individual during the modernist era. (shrink)

Modern buildings do not easily harmonize with other buildings, regardless of whether the latter are also modern. This often-observed fact has not received a satisfactory explanation. To improve on existing explanations, this article first generalizes one of Ortega y Gasset’s observations concerning modern fine art, and then develops a metaphysics of styles that is inspired by work in the philosophy of biology. The resulting explanation is that modern architecture is incapable of developing patterns that facilitate harmonizing, because such patterns would (...) humanize buildings and modern architecture is a homeostatic property cluster with a dehumanizing motive at its core. (shrink)

RAAAF [Rietveld Architecture-Art-Affordances] is an interdisciplinary studio that operates at the crossroads of visual art, experimental architecture and philosophy. RAAAF makes location- and context-specific artworks, an approach that derives from the respective backgrounds of the founding partners: Prix de Rome laureate Ronald Rietveld and Socrates Professor in Philosophy Erik Rietveld.

Why are cities looking more and more alike? Why do hipster coffee shops and clothing boutiques all share that same vibe? One answer is that gentrification represents an invasive force that forcibly re-models cities, from the top-down, to meet the monotone eye of the gentrifier. Gentrification brings in external developers and designers, who create new businesses which all meet that one monotonous aesthetic mold. But I suggest, using work from Quill Kukla and Jane Jacobs, that this top-down model of gentrification (...) is incomplete. Gentrification also incentivizes local residents to remake their own businesses and properties to meet that monotone eye. Gentrification is a pressure which pushes cities to meet a universalized and therefore homogenized taste, rather than letting diverse tastes flourish. (This piece originally published as part of a symposium on Quill Kukla's City Living.). (shrink)

Once known as the city of silk, Suzhou 苏州 has become the centre of wedding dress production, selling paradise on earth for one day, including copies of the last royal wedding dress, out of shops at the foot of mythic Tiger Hill. Suzhou is also the host of what is known as the Silicon Valley of the East. It has attracted millions of migrants searching for a better future; millions of tourists visit every year to experience the past, strolling through (...) the gardens and courtyards of its Old Town. The contrasts could hardly be more apparent. Slow time, and fast time, and the time of the in-between, are woven into the city’s complex spatial fabric. This is a conversation by eight authors in eight frames on a city that connects them. (shrink)

This paper seeks to refute the claim that architectural value is one and the same value as the artistic value of architecture. As few scholars explicitly endorse this claim, instead tacitly holding it, I term it the implicit claim. Three potential motivations for the implicit claim are offered before it is shown that, contrary to supporting the claim, they set the foundations for considering architectural value and the artistic value of architecture to be distinct. After refuting the potential motivations and (...) offering some counterexamples to the claim, I provide some comments upon the interaction(s) between aesthetic, artistic, and architectural values, which are benefitted and supported by Louise Hanson’s discussion of attributive value in the artistic domain. (shrink)

What do houses do to the people who live with them? In what sense are houses themselves living things? If they live and act, how to conceive of the relationship between built and natural landscapes, and between environment and life more broadly? This article considers three moments at which human geographers have attempted to answer these questions without submitting to visions of environmental causation and constraint favoured by determinists, who dominated the discipline into the early 20th century. The article begins (...) with the work of Carl Sauer, by 1925 the major American figure refuting environmental determinism at a theoretical level and recommending the study of housing as an articulate transcript of human action. It then looks back to the American writings of Friedrich Ratzel, one of several German scholars Sauer canonized, to illuminate a more vitalistic ontology of domestic architecture, and an urbanism, untapped by Sauer when filing his dissent. It then looks ahead to mid-century studies of vernacular architecture – by those of Sauer’s students friendlier to urban life than he was, and by the critic and publisher J. B. Jackson – to assess how this inheritance informed critiques of industrial modernity in the post-war United States. The article observes certain continuities, despite manifest tensions, between ‘old’ and ‘new’ cultural geographies. It also routes a long-standing set of debates concerning the relationship of materiality to meaning – and of spatial to social form – through the case of human geography, a peculiar interstice in the broader constellation of disciplines. (shrink)

This essay aims to contribute comparative points of contact between two influential figures of nineteenth century aesthetic reflection; namely, Victor Hugo’s artful considerations on architecture in his novel Notre-Dame de Paris and G.W.F. Hegel’s philosophical appraisal of the artform in his Lectures on Fine Art. Although their individual views on architecture are widely recognized, there is scant comparative commentary on these two thinkers, which seems odd because of the relative convergence of their historically situated observations. Owing to this shortage, I (...) note that, while certainly not identical, Hugo and Hegel share an aesthetic family resemblance in how they hold similar ideas on architecture’s symbolic function, cognitive content, and, ultimately, how the artform’s ability to remain a standing paragon of meaning was razed by successive modes of cultural communication. Consequently, the essay works to show some congruent aesthetic affinities between these two great figures, but which appears to be overlooked in the literature. (shrink)

Adolf Loos is one of the few figures that Wittgenstein explicitly named as an influence on his thought. Loos’s influence has been debated in the context of determining Wittgenstein’s relation to modernism, as well as in attempts to come to terms with his work as an architect. This paper looks in a different direction, examining a remark in which Wittgenstein responded to Heidegger’s notorious pronouncement that ‘the Nothing noths’ by reference to Loos’s critique of ornamentation. Wittgenstein draws a parallel between (...) the requirement to start philosophy with an inarticulate sound and the need, in certain cultural periods, to highlight the borders of tablecloths using lace. Paying heed to Wittgenstein’s remark sheds further light on a Loosian influence at work in his thinking about modern civilization, both in his well-known ‘Lectures on Aesthetics’ and in the earlier notes from his 1930 lectures at Cambridge. (shrink)

Might architecture be reconceived as a form of performance? I draw upon Nelson Goodman’s writing on architecture—including his account of architectural notation—and David Davies’s performance theory, which claims that artworks should be considered not as products made by generative performances, but rather as the performances themselves. I tie the exemplification that Goodman identifies as the primary way architectural works ‘mean’ to the role of the architectural ‘score’, recast not as a mere ‘constraint’ but as integral to the creative processes by (...) which architecture establishes an ‘artistic statement’ and a distinctive ‘virtual’ realm. In so doing, I reconcile such a position with an aesthetics of reception, whereby the situated encounter with the physical building is seen as essential to the critical retrieval of any given architectural performance. I test this position against a late work by Sigurd Lewerentz, completed when he was in his eighties, and examine the extraordinary lengths necessitated by his idiosyncratic imperative not to cut any bricks, thereby articulating an artwork every bit as radical as contemporaneous works by conceptual artists. (shrink)

Presence of users as the main actors of each adaptive reuse of a given cultural heritage site heavily depends on the quality of their sensual experience there. This, in turn, seems to stem from how much they trust the integrity and provenance of the heritage attributes and activities pending within such historical sites. This paper aims to define the sincerity and authenticity as influential indicators of the users’ trust in adaptive reuse of cultural heritage sites. To reach the goal, the (...) author hereof has analyzed all the industrial heritage sites in Iran which have been adaptively reused (case studies) and has surveyed 125 visitors. The findings confirm that sincerity and authenticity can largely influence the visitors’ trust and sensitize their experience. (shrink)

Summary This paper deals with the development of Husserl’s and Merleau-Pontys analyses of the affective lived experience of body and space. Both the concept of „flesh“ (Merleau-Ponty) and „Hyle“ (Husserl) stand for a sensuous principle that underlies the original givenness and solidarity of body and world and I claim that this interaction and the concomitant intertwining of body and place make up the existential dimension of architecture, i.e. the, being-here-in-a-place’. In this connection, I argue that the fact that bodily affective (...) experience endows the world with sense has led to a double break: On the one hand with representation and on the other with perspectivity and compossibility of the realms of being in Husserl’s and Merleau-Ponty’s respective approaches. Finally, I will exemplify this break and the development of genetic insights – from an anthropocentric, organic and harmonious space conception to a topologic space made up of incompossibilities expressing an ambiguous sense – with paradigmatic works of architecture, so as to make evident the explanatory potential of phenomenology for architecture. (shrink)

L’arte contemporanea è caleidoscopica: può catapultarci in ambienti complessi o minimali richiedendo la nostra attiva partecipazione, ancorarsi a luoghi particolari, porci di fronte a opere apparentemente indistinguibili da oggetti ed eventi della vita quotidiana, appropriarsi illegalmente degli spazi pubblici, e così via. Questo volume muove dalla premessa che uno dei compiti della filosofia dell’arte sia prestare attenzione a specifiche pratiche artistiche e a teorie sull’arte avanzate in altri ambiti di ricerca, per poi organizzare in maniera perspicua la molteplicità dei dati (...) raccolti. I filosofi possono così costruire teorie quanto più generali possibile per cercare di spiegare ciò che emerge da tali dati. Le ricerche qui presentate si concentrano su alcuni fenomeni, accuratamente scelti nell’ampio panorama dell’arte contemporanea: l’installation art e i suoi rapporti con l’installazione espositiva, l’arte sito-specifica e la sua appartenenza alla più ampia tradizione dell’arte situata, il ruolo delle idee nell’arte concettuale e il carattere sovversivo della street art. Sfruttando l’efficacia esplicativa del concetto di medium artistico, nonché della individuazione di forme e generi d’arte, le analisi qui presentate indagano le ragioni per cui in queste pratiche artistiche sono centrali l’esperienza dello spazio, l’interazione fra opere e pubblico, i luoghi d’installazione delle opere e gli oggetti come portatori di significati. (shrink)

A critical note on Peter Lamarque and Nigel Walter’s ‘The Application of Narrative to the Conservation of Historic Buildings’.

While the Vienna Circle had virtually no impact on the Czech-speaking philosophical community during the 1930s, one can find a curious meeting point in the field of theory of architecture. There is now a growing literature on Otto Neurath as a theorist of architecture and urbanism, who emphasized the social aspects of modern building and approached architecture from his idiosyncratic viewpoint of Marxism interpreted as a physicalistic social science. It is less well known that a young Czech architecture critic and (...) theorist, Karel Teige, cultivated strikingly similar views during the same period—from 1920s to 1930s—albeit without any knowledge of Neurath’s thought in particular, or for that matter the Vienna Circle in general. The chapter reveals similarities as well as differences between Neurath and Teige on Marxism, science and architecture, and the Bauhaus, as well as a discussion of the relations of both to the contemporaries, most importantly Adolf Loos, Josef Frank and Hannes Meyer. (shrink)

A response to Saul Fisher’s critical note on Peter Lamarque and Nigel Walter’s ‘The Application of Narrative to the Conservation of Historic Buildings’.