GS 341 is one of the most familiar of Nietzsche’s writings. This article proposes a new reading that stands in contrast with most English-language Nietzsche scholarship. The text presents a communication and its reception. A ‘demon’ makes an announcement, and a hearer responds in one way or another. But there is also another narrative altogether, whose conceptual vocabulary comes from a dynamic world-view. In this an interaction of forces leads to a new situation. If the hearer is not crushed by (...) the ‘greatest weight’, there must be an inner force that counteracts its impact. I argue that what Nietzsche calls amor fati is a state that allows our drives to achieve full expression, and so makes possible a collective strength able to withstand the greatest impact. The final sentence refers to a “confirmation and sealing”. What happens is that the demon’s message makes an impression on the receptive hearer. For Nietzsche this is a working metaphor, not a turn of phrase. In a draft from this period he writes: “Let us stamp the image of eternity on our life!” That sudden and forceful act, embodying an evaluative judgement, is the event that GS 341 is all about. (shrink)

The article examines the reduction of architecture to the dimension of utility which results in placelessness. The modern redefinition of science as “knowing-making” is essential to this reduction, although it has fundamental and forgotten importance. Drawing upon Martin Heidegger’s and George Grant’s critique of technology, and the ideas of Alberto Pérez-Gómez and Charles-Francois Viel, the significance of the complex relations between theory and practice in architecture will be explored in the context of Kimberly Dovey’s notion of the cycle of lived-space. (...) A re-definition of modern “knowing-making” reveals a semioticlevel which contains new possibilities for meaningful and environmentally attuned architecture within the technological framework. I suggest “designing-building” as an alternative, understood as a process of poetic recreation of meaningful spaces. (shrink)