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Abstract Architectural Phenomenology: Towards A ABSTRACT ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY: TOWARDS A DESIGN METHODOLOGY OF PERSON AND PLACE by David Thomas VonderBrink This thesis document investigates the philosophical movement of phenomenology and its implications in forming an architectural design methodology. The writings of such existential philosophers and authors as Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Christian Norberg-Schulz are discussed. To position the argument within a current dialectically opposing discourse, the deconstructivist writings of Jacques Derrida and his influence on the architecture of Bernard Tschumi and Peter Eisenman are explored. Steven Holl’s Museum of Contemporary Art and Louis Kahn’s Salk Institute for Biological Studies illustrate a phenomenological approach in design through a foundation in the writings of the aforementioned authors. Through these examinations a design methodology that seeks to express the interdependent relationship between person and place is formulated. This methodology is then tested in the design of a large residential and pedestrian path sited in Cincinnati, Ohio. Architectural Phenomenology: Towards a Design Methodology of Person and Place A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Miami University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Architecture Department of Architecture and Interior Design by David Thomas VonderBrink Miami University Oxford, Ohio 2007 ____________________________ John Reynolds - Advisor ____________________________ Craig Hinrichs - Reader ____________________________ Gerardo Brown-Manrique – Reader TABLE OF CONTENTS Page # 1. INTRODUCTION 2. Heidegger 2. Merleau-Ponty 3. Norberg-Schulz 4. Deconstruction 6. Bernard Tschumi 7. Peter Eisenman 8. Steven Holl 11. Louis I. Kahn 13. DESIGN METHODOLOGY 14. ADDENDUM 21. BIBLIOGRAPHY 25-41. DESIGN PROJECT IMAGES ii INTRODUCTION The essence of our existence consists To understand phenomenology in of concrete phenomena. This includes order to form a design methodology I everything from trees and forests, to will discuss the writings of such people and animals, to stones and water, existential philosophers and authors as to furniture, windows, houses, streets, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau- and cities. It also includes celestial Ponty, and Christian Norberg-Schulz. bodies such as the sun, moon, and stars To position my argument within a as well as impalpable phenomena such current dialectically opposing discourse, as emotion and perception. I will discuss the deconstructivist Phenomenology, a philosophy of writings of Jacques Derrida and his investigation into the things that enable influence on the architecture of Bernard us to gather the world, opposes an Tschumi and Peter Eisenman. abstract method of viewing our world. Illustrating a phenomenological Meaning, abstract methods of inquiry approach in design, I will investigate, such as scientific, diagrammatic, through a foundation in the writings of geometric, and analytical approaches the aforementioned authors, Steven that arrive at objective knowledge do not Holl’s Museum of Contemporary Art in adequately describe the structure of the Helsinki and Louis Kahn’s Salk Institute concrete world. Phenomenology allows for Biological Studies in California. us to express the essence of our Through these examinations I will existence through architecture. Thus, formulate a design methodology that seen in its totality within seeks to express or reveal the phenomenology; architecture becomes interdependent relationship between the “concretization of existential space”. person and place. In other words, approaching the process of architectural design through a phenomenological lens presents the possibility of bridging the interdependent relationship of human existence and the world. 1 Heidegger context with your world. In reaction to In the text Being and Time (1962), the destructive dominance of positivism the German philosopher Martin in the early nineteenth century, Heidegger (1889-1976) argued that in Heidegger sought original experience conventional philosophy and psychology through ontology, the study of the the relationship between person and origins of language. Within an world has been reduced to either an architectural discipline, Heidegger’s idealist or realist perspective. In an interpretation of Bauen, the German idealist view, the world is a function of a word for building, as “dwelling” is person who acts on the world through recognized. Architecture is not just consciousness and, therefore, actively about thinking, it is about feeling and knows and shapes his or her world. In that feeling depends on time, place and contrast, a realist view sees the person as subject. The feelings invoked by this a function of the world, meaning, the experience lead to poetry, narratives, and world acts on the person and he or she ultimately built form in order to reacts. Heidegger claimed that both demonstrate our existence. perspectives are out of touch with the Heidegger states that things gather, nature of human life because they or are the intermediary between human assume a separation and directional existence and the world. In other words, relationship between person and world built objects create a place for that does not exist in actual lived ontological events. These events where experience. In this sense, the gathering of the four dimensions of phenomenology supersedes the idealist the world – earth, heavens, mortals, and and realist division between individual the divine – takes place are where and world with a conception in which humans dwell. the two are indivisible—a person-world whole that is one rather than two. Merleau-Ponty This is Heidegger’s phenomenology, The French philosopher Maurice one of experiencing Dasein or “being Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) considers there”. You are being in context, rather phenomenology an existential than Sosein or “being thus”, out of philosophy like Heidegger, but 2 concentrates on the importance of the for our conceptual understanding of the body and perceptual experience. things around us with the action of the Merleau-Ponty begins to place one being body as the ultimate root of knowledge in the world, or his or her self- of the world. The body, in a sense, acts awareness, as an objective engagement as an interface between our mind and the with the world, where the body is the world. Our physical engagement with objective intermediary between what the things that surround us provides both Heidegger speaks of as the person-world the source and the limits of our relationship. understanding of those things. Hence, as The mind's access to the outside the body provides knowledge of the world must inevitably arise from the world, the external world presents body's movement in it, which also knowledge of the body (recalling necessarily involves a movement of it: Heidegger’s notion of being-in-the- "Visible and mobile, my body is a thing world). For example, as grasping a among things; it is caught in the fabric of hammer and swinging it to build or the world, and its cohesion is that of a destroy speaks to our relationship to the thing”. Merleau-Ponty’s most famous world and things, the object of a hammer example is that of the blind person tells us about the composition, scale, and navigating with the aid of a stick, where proportion of the human hand. the stick, like a carpenter’s tool, gradually becomes an extension of the Norberg-Schulz arm that holds it. The contemporary author, Christian Merleau-Ponty, along with the Norberg-Schulz applies the philosophy French author Henri Bergson (1859- of phenomenology within architectural 1941), specifically in the text Matter and discourse to arrive at an existential Memory (1892) suggest that: "the objects emphasis on space. Rather than placing which surround my body reflect its importance on abstract space, such as possible action upon them". Their Modernist, universal space, Norberg- argument places an importance on a Schulz calls for a return to figurative, priori structures of perception. Bergson qualitative architecture. This and Merleau-Ponty propose a framework investigation into how one dwells 3 establishes a meaningful relationship might offer a solution to the current between humans and the environment. problem of individual connection to our The existential purpose of building is to world. create place from a site, that is, to reveal the potential meanings given within a Deconstruction situation. Humans dwell when we are Within a phenomenological able to concretize the world in built framework and an architectural form, where concretization is the result methodology, the writings of the French of art rather than science or the abstract. philosopher Jacques Derrida (1930-) Architecture concretizes, or gathers the provide an opposing argument on the entanglements of our everyday life- philosophical spectrum, a movement world, where gathering refers to the within philosophy and architecture primary aspects of humans “being-in- known as deconstruction. This the-world”. Dwelling, through movement challenges the formulations identification and orientation, gathers the of certain basic precepts of Western world or environment into building. metaphysics such as presence, truth, the Norberg-Schulz asks, what is the position of the subject, and the nature of task of architecture? It is to "make a site identity. become a 'place', that is, to uncover the Derrida’s process materialized out of meanings potentially present in the given an opposition to structuralism and a environment". Thus
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