Phenomenology (architecture)
Encyclopedia
Phenomenology is both a philosophical
design current in contemporary architecture
and a specific field of academic research, based on the experience of building materials and their sensory properties.
In phenomenology, the environment is concretely defined as "the place", and the things which occur there "take place". The place is not so simple as the locality, but consists of concrete things which have material substance, shape, texture, and color, and together coalesce to form the environment’s character, or atmosphere. It is this atmosphere which allows certain spaces, with similar or even identical functions, to embody very different properties, in accord with the unique cultural and environmental conditions of the place which they exist. Phenomenology is conceived as a “return to things”, maneuvering away from the abstractions of science and its neutral objectivity. Phenomenology absorbs the concept of subjectivity, making the thing and its unique conversations with its place the relevant topic and not the thing itself. The man-made components of the environment become the settlements of differing scales, some large - like cities, and some small - like the house. The paths between these settlements and the various elements which create the cultural environment become the secondary defining characteristics of the place. The distinction of natural and manmade offers us the first step in the phenomenological approach. The second is to qualify inside and outside, or the relationship of earth-sky. The third and final step is to assess character, or how things are made and exist as participants in their environment.
Beginning in the 1970s, phenomenology, with a marked influence from the writings of Martin Heidegger
, began to have a major impact on contemporary architectural theory. In the 1970s, the School of Comparative Studies at the University of Essex
, under the influence of Dalibor Vesely
and Joseph Rykwert
, was the breeding ground for a generation of architectural phenomenologists, which included David Leatherbarrow
, professor of architecture at the University of Pennsylvania
, Alberto Pérez-Gómez
, professor of architectural history at McGill University
, and the architect Daniel Libeskind
. In the 1980s, the phenomenological approach to architecture was continued and further developed by Vesely and his colleague Peter Carl in their research and teaching at the Department of Architecture at the University of Cambridge
.
However, the philosophical writings of phenomenologists such as Heidegger, Edmund Husserl
and Hans-Georg Gadamer
were perhaps not as accessible to the student of architecture as Gaston Bachelard's Poetics of Space (1951) or Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception (English version 1962). Christian Norberg-Schulz
was, for many architecture students of the 1980s, an important figure in this movement. His book Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture (New York: Rizzoli, 1980) provided a readily accessible explanation of a phenomonological approach to architecture and was widely read in architectural schools. . Thomas Thiis-Evensen, a follower of Norberg-Schulz, also contributed with the book Archetypes in Architecture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987).
Although interest in phenomenology has waned in more recent times, prominent architects, such as Steven Holl
and Peter Zumthor
are described by Juhani Pallasmaa
as current practitioners of the phenomenology of architecture.
Present-day architectural phenomenology has widened its scope to include theorists whose modes of thinking are bordering on phenomenology, such as Gilles Deleuze
and Henri Bergson
, and Paul Virilio
(urban planner).
Notable architects of this academic movement include:
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
design current in contemporary architecture
Architecture
Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...
and a specific field of academic research, based on the experience of building materials and their sensory properties.
In phenomenology, the environment is concretely defined as "the place", and the things which occur there "take place". The place is not so simple as the locality, but consists of concrete things which have material substance, shape, texture, and color, and together coalesce to form the environment’s character, or atmosphere. It is this atmosphere which allows certain spaces, with similar or even identical functions, to embody very different properties, in accord with the unique cultural and environmental conditions of the place which they exist. Phenomenology is conceived as a “return to things”, maneuvering away from the abstractions of science and its neutral objectivity. Phenomenology absorbs the concept of subjectivity, making the thing and its unique conversations with its place the relevant topic and not the thing itself. The man-made components of the environment become the settlements of differing scales, some large - like cities, and some small - like the house. The paths between these settlements and the various elements which create the cultural environment become the secondary defining characteristics of the place. The distinction of natural and manmade offers us the first step in the phenomenological approach. The second is to qualify inside and outside, or the relationship of earth-sky. The third and final step is to assess character, or how things are made and exist as participants in their environment.
Beginning in the 1970s, phenomenology, with a marked influence from the writings of Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher known for his existential and phenomenological explorations of the "question of Being."...
, began to have a major impact on contemporary architectural theory. In the 1970s, the School of Comparative Studies at the University of Essex
University of Essex
The University of Essex is a British campus university whose original and largest campus is near the town of Colchester, England. Established in 1963 and receiving its Royal Charter in 1965...
, under the influence of Dalibor Vesely
Dalibor Vesely
Dalibor Vesely was born in Prague, Czech Republic in 1934. He studied engineering, architecture, art history and philosophy in Prague and in Munich and obtained his PhD from Charles University in Prague. He studied with Hans-Georg Gadamer, with whom he kept a correspondence that would last until...
and Joseph Rykwert
Joseph Rykwert
Joseph Rykwert is Paul Philippe Cret Professor of Architecture Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania, and is widely regarded as the most important architectural historian and critic of his generation. He has spent most of his working life in the United Kingdom and America...
, was the breeding ground for a generation of architectural phenomenologists, which included David Leatherbarrow
David Leatherbarrow
David Leatherbarrow is Professor of Architecture and Chair of the Graduate Group in Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design, Philadelphia, where he has taught since 1984. He received his B.Arch. from the University of Kentucky and holds a Ph.D. in Art from the University of...
, professor of architecture at the University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
, Alberto Pérez-Gómez
Alberto Pérez-Gómez
Alberto Pérez-Gómez is an architectural historian and is also known as a theorist and a promoter of phenomenology. Born December 24, 1949 in Mexico City, Mexico, he graduated as an engineer and architect from the National Polytechnic Institute of Mexico and pursued graduate studies in the history...
, professor of architectural history at McGill University
McGill University
Mohammed Fathy is a public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The university bears the name of James McGill, a prominent Montreal merchant from Glasgow, Scotland, whose bequest formed the beginning of the university...
, and the architect Daniel Libeskind
Daniel Libeskind
Daniel Libeskind, is an American architect, artist, and set designer of Polish-Jewish descent. Libeskind founded Studio Daniel Libeskind in 1989 with his wife, Nina, and is its principal design architect...
. In the 1980s, the phenomenological approach to architecture was continued and further developed by Vesely and his colleague Peter Carl in their research and teaching at the Department of Architecture at the University of Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
.
However, the philosophical writings of phenomenologists such as Heidegger, Edmund Husserl
Edmund Husserl
Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl was a philosopher and mathematician and the founder of the 20th century philosophical school of phenomenology. He broke with the positivist orientation of the science and philosophy of his day, yet he elaborated critiques of historicism and of psychologism in logic...
and Hans-Georg Gadamer
Hans-Georg Gadamer
Hans-Georg Gadamer was a German philosopher of the continental tradition, best known for his 1960 magnum opus, Truth and Method .-Life:...
were perhaps not as accessible to the student of architecture as Gaston Bachelard's Poetics of Space (1951) or Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception (English version 1962). Christian Norberg-Schulz
Christian Norberg-Schulz
Christian Norberg-Schulz was a Norwegian architect, architectural historian and theorist.He was born in Oslo. He is the father of singer Elizabeth Norberg-Schulz....
was, for many architecture students of the 1980s, an important figure in this movement. His book Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture (New York: Rizzoli, 1980) provided a readily accessible explanation of a phenomonological approach to architecture and was widely read in architectural schools. . Thomas Thiis-Evensen, a follower of Norberg-Schulz, also contributed with the book Archetypes in Architecture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987).
Although interest in phenomenology has waned in more recent times, prominent architects, such as Steven Holl
Steven Holl
Steven Holl is an American architect and watercolorist, perhaps best known for the 1998 Kiasma Contemporary Art Museum in Helsinki, Finland, the 2003 Simmons Hall at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the celebrated 2007 Bloch Building addition to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City,...
and Peter Zumthor
Peter Zumthor
Peter Zumthor is a Swiss architect and winner of the 2009 Pritzker Prize.-Early life:Zumthor was born in Basel, the son of a cabinet-maker...
are described by Juhani Pallasmaa
Juhani Pallasmaa
Juhani Uolevi Pallasmaa is a Finnish architect and former professor of architecture at the Helsinki University of Technology and a former Director of the Museum of Finnish Architecture . He runs his own architect's office – Arkkitehtitoimisto Juhani Pallasmaa KY – in Helsinki...
as current practitioners of the phenomenology of architecture.
Present-day architectural phenomenology has widened its scope to include theorists whose modes of thinking are bordering on phenomenology, such as Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze , was a French philosopher who, from the early 1960s until his death, wrote influentially on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus , both co-written with Félix...
and Henri Bergson
Henri Bergson
Henri-Louis Bergson was a major French philosopher, influential especially in the first half of the 20th century. Bergson convinced many thinkers that immediate experience and intuition are more significant than rationalism and science for understanding reality.He was awarded the 1927 Nobel Prize...
, and Paul Virilio
Paul Virilio
Paul Virilio is a cultural theorist and urbanist. He is best known for his writings about technology as it has developed in relation to speed and power, with diverse references to architecture, the arts, the city and the military....
(urban planner).
Notable architects of this academic movement include:
- Christian Norberg-SchulzChristian Norberg-SchulzChristian Norberg-Schulz was a Norwegian architect, architectural historian and theorist.He was born in Oslo. He is the father of singer Elizabeth Norberg-Schulz....
- Peter ZumthorPeter ZumthorPeter Zumthor is a Swiss architect and winner of the 2009 Pritzker Prize.-Early life:Zumthor was born in Basel, the son of a cabinet-maker...
- Caruso St JohnCaruso St JohnCaruso St John is an architectural firm established in 1990 by Adam Caruso and Peter St John.They have gained an international reputation for excellence in designing contemporary projects in the public realm. The practice came to public attention with the New Art Gallery in Walsall, a commission...
- Steven HollSteven HollSteven Holl is an American architect and watercolorist, perhaps best known for the 1998 Kiasma Contemporary Art Museum in Helsinki, Finland, the 2003 Simmons Hall at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the celebrated 2007 Bloch Building addition to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City,...
- Juhani PallasmaaJuhani PallasmaaJuhani Uolevi Pallasmaa is a Finnish architect and former professor of architecture at the Helsinki University of Technology and a former Director of the Museum of Finnish Architecture . He runs his own architect's office – Arkkitehtitoimisto Juhani Pallasmaa KY – in Helsinki...
Major works of this movement
- Paul Andreu, The National Grand Theater of China
- Karsten Harries, The Ethical Function of Architecture (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1997)
- Deborah Hauptmann (Ed), The Body in Architecture (Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2006)
- David Leatherbarrow, On Weathering: The Life of Buildings in Time, with Mohsen MostafaviMohsen MostafaviMohsen Mostafavi is an Iranian-American architect and educator. He currently the Dean and Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He was formerly the Gale and Ira Drukier Dean of the College of Architecture, Art and Planning at Cornell University...
( Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1993) - Christian Norberg-Schulz, Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture (New York: Rizzoli, 1980)
- Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses (New York: Wiley, 1996/2005)
- Alberto Pérez-Gómez, Architecture and the Crisis of Modern Science (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1983)
- Steen Eiler Rasmussen, Experiencing Architecture (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1959)
- Joseph Rykwert, The Dancing Column: On Order in Architecture (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996)
- David Seamon & Robert Mugerauer (Eds), Dwelling, Place & Environment: Towards a Phenomenology of Person and World (Martinus Nijhoff 1985/Krieger Publishing 2000)
- Thomas Thiis-Evensen, Archetypes in Architecture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987)
- Dalibor Vesely, Architecture in the Age of Divided Representation: The Question of Creativity in the Shadow of Production (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2004)