I'm thinking primarily about books like Byung-Chul Han's 'Non-things: Upheaval in the Life World', Patrick Curry's 'Enchantment: Wonder in Modern Life', Scruton's 'Beauty' Michael Serres' 'Malfeasance: Appropriation Through Pollution?' There are of course many books on architecture and art out there, but not ones, surprisingly, that critique modernity and modernist architecture. More generally, I'm looking for texts that work with the idea that the beautiful and storied world is being hidden from us such that we experience a "poverty in world" (as Han says). In fact, a good summation of what I'm looking for lies in the use of Tim Robinson's word "geophany" to signify a "showing forth of the Earth".
Christopher Alexander's 'The Timeless Way of Building'
Thanks, I'll look into this. Based on the title alone, it sounds fitting.
Ah, I'm somewhat familiar with Leon Krier, although I've not read any of his books. Wrath of Gnon is a great account!
Hes a israelite but a based one like Weininger or Wittgenstein (like them, hes also Austrian, but not gay though)
The architect Leon Krier might be what you are looking for.
I found about him through @WrathofGnon in Tumblr and / or Twitter.He might have other things of interest.
good thread OP. Also would like to add aesthetics and how spaces influence thought if anyone has suggestions
Thanks.
Ah, I'm interested in Heidegger's philosophy of enframing and particularly his notion of the hand and its relation to work, etc. But I've never read this. Thanks.
Interestingly enough, I just bought a book summarising the thoughts of Ruskin, particularly his philosophy of life. I know of him through various texts on the Gothic. I'll look into those other names.
That's a great quote. A lot of globalist buildings signify nothing but efficiency, and of course a lot of postmodern projects are simply exercises in technical proficiency. You do of course get 'playfulness' in the form of postmodern idiosyncratic buildings, the ones that are completely warped and/or kitsch, but I'd argue they're a mockery of what actual playfulness is.
A very famous book indeed, but one that I've not read yet...
I'm not sure if im allowed to link things here. There's a article by Peter Wollen, "Situationists and architecture" published in the New Left Review i would reccomend to you. It's freely available.
For Heidegger, I would recommend reading the essays originally given as the Bremen Lectures as well as Building Dwelling Thinking - assume you've already read Question Concerning Technology, so that's The Thing, The Danger, and The Turn. The Thing is where he lays out the Fourfold, but Building Dwelling Thinking, The Origin of the Work of Art, and Letter on Humanism are also relevant.
NTA but I could hardly find any of those "Thomistic" architects that he mentioned
Ralph Adams Cram is the only architect among them. Erwin Panofsky and Otto von Simson were theorists. Eric Gill may have done some domestic stuff but it wasn't his forte. There are also of course those medieval architects that left behind texts, like Abbe Suger.
Thanks but Crams books seem like the only affordable ones
Heidegger’s Building, Thinking, Dwelling touches on this topic by setting forth a harmony (the fourfold) which we ought try an achieve in our constructions.
For me, it's Ruskin and those that followed him, e.g. Cram, Panofsky, Simson, -- all on what Gill would call the Aristotelian-Thomistic plane of architectural/artistic thinking.
John Ruskin? The Fabian Socialist?
As if socialism was really that bad back in Ruskin's day... Hello? William Morris? They were clearly on to something.
Wasn't a critique, just a random inquiry
To be fair, what other John Ruskin could it be, especially in this context? I apologise anyway.
Its fine
I know the Situationist international wrote a bit on architecture. Simon Sadler wrote a book on this specific part of their theory, the gist of it is basically: "the benign professionalism of architecture and design had led to a sterilization of the world that threatened to wipe out any sense of spontaneity or playfulness."
And "The poetics of space" of course. The go to philosophy book for architecture
While the poetics of space is great, it is primarily a collection of essays on symbols, emotion, and the psyche and the interplay between spaces. I don’t think it is what OP is specifically asking about, but I do think it is worth reading.
OP here. Well, I am interested in phenomenology and architectural philosophy, but I'm thinking it might not be for me for a different reason. Apparently Bachelard inspired a lot of cold modernist buildings!
It is still worth reading! Bachelard is very kino. He would have hated cold modernist buildings. He was all about the home as a cradle, as our foremost learned space, much like Merleau-Ponty’s ‘Level.’ He criticized Paris (of all places!), writing, “In Paris there are no houses, and the inhabitants of the big city live in superimposed boxes.” He hated apartments and the symbol of us living stacked on top of one another like coffins in a mausoleum.
Remember, Steven Holl claims to be inspired by Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Bachelard, and goes as far as calling his designs phenomenological architecture, but he designs things like pic related. His designs have nothing to do with phenomenology, it just sounds cool to say. Read Bachelard.
Wasn't Merleau-Ponty of the opinion that we talk to the world through cultural means?
Thanks for this. I do have a habit of sometimes discarding a book/author based on the practices and ideals that others have put in place. That's not a reasonable thing to do given how common it is for initial teachings to be distorted throughout essentially any discourse...
Yes, glass blocks are ever so slightly better than stone blocks.
About Bachelard though, this paragraph seems odd. I'm taking from Wikipedia of course, but just on a surface level I do wonder about this:
'He focuses especially on the personal, emotional response to buildings both in life and in literary works, both in prose and in poetry. He is thus led to consider spatial types such as the attic, the cellar, drawers and the like. Bachelard implicitly urges architects to base their work on the experiences it will engender rather than on abstract rationales that may or may not affect viewers and users of architecture.'
This almost sounds like a case for spartan buildings based on the utility of living and nothing more, no? In a sense, it's abstract rationales, if I take that to mean something 'elevated', that gives us the drive to use ornament, natural motifs, etc. These things come from gratuitousness and uselessness, I'd argue. I may be completely misunderstanding this basic proposition of Bachelard's book, which, again, I've taken from Wiki.
He argues that many emotional and mental phenomenon express themselves in physical space. For example, Bachelard praises the possibilities for hiding and keeping secrets that nooks and crannies allow. He isn’t really considering something as specifics as ornamentation, rather closets under the stairs and basements and attics, etc.
I do very much appreciation this approach because we tend to value transparency and light in Western society. Han talks about this, as well as people like Tanizaki before him in 'In Praise of Shadows'. We need resistance, difference and otherness.
I love In Praise of Shadows and I recommend it to everyone. Another book in the same vein is The Book of Tea
From Bauhaus to Our House is the only critique of modern architecture I've read that felt immediately applicable to the scale of my own environment. Helps it's also pretty funny.
i find these buildings very beautiful. there's something ever so pure about them, moreover they're simultaneously tranquil and imposing. really quite profound
I understand that you think they might be crystalline and even ethereal, but I'd say the glass that you think is tranquil is just soulless, being devoid of warmth. No natural motifs or symbols of cultural striving can take root on these facades. Only the human form is reflected in them so that those in cities just wander through a hall of mirrors. Pure anthropocentrism. Indeed, humans do nothing but work slavishly in these buildings. They're monuments to hypercapitalism. Yet at the same time they're completely inhuman because they're not made to the human scale. They literally block out the landscape that tethers us to the Earth and gives us meaning. The only buildings I dislike more are those made in the structural expressionism style.
Correct. They should be leveled. Washington, D.C. is also soulless but far preferable to New York because there’s so much less post-war architecture and so much more neoclassical
Luckily I live in the UK and quite near Oxford of all places...
Must be nice. I also live in a college town, but an American one built mostly after 1900.
Baudrillard has similar descriptions of the twin towers. Read his The Spirit of Terrorism and his dialogue with Jean Nouvel.
>The only buildings I dislike more are those made in the structural expressionism style
These are the people I share a board with...
Let me guess, you're a techbro transhumanist who wants to live in Dubai and has fantasies about being Elon Musk?
One of those is correct
>They're monuments to hypercapitalism
If the soviet's were still around, their skylines would look the same
I don’t really like Heidegger but that rec qualifies. I would read Decline of the West. You will like that book if this topic interests you.
I forgot to ask about books critiquing advertisements. Serres' 'Malfeasance' is the only one I own.
Simply putrid, disgusting, awful, I have no words that can do this horror-vomit that we call modern "architecture" justice.
I like glass buildings. Its a hell of a lot better than the souless concrete blocks of the 20th century
If you can read French, Anselm Jappe's Concrete. Check out this summary https://counter-currents.com/2023/09/the-matter-with-concrete/
Thank you, counter-currents-anon. Another banger. You really never disappoint.
>t.bugman
Human-scale is a buzzword, but it works. Also, another anon mentioned genus loci which is grasping at the term but I can’t think of one that particularly and specifically is centered around the human form, though I understand your desire. It is increasingly less likely with the rise of transhumanism.
OP here. I wrote an article based on my dislike of sci-fi and the implication that visions of the future must necessarily be synonymous with sterility and ugliness, but I'm wary of posting it here as it obviously contains my personal details. There's also a lot that I'd changed now if I could write it again, but I suppose that's natural. Post or not?
Not all scifi is ugly. And the ones that are ugliest, like cyberpunk, are ugly as a warning to society.
My essay addresses all of these points and more. I say that despite the fact that cyberpunk serves as a warning, we still continue to emulate it. I also say that sci-fi architecture is only good when its foundation is cultural that looks back toward the Earth and to a positive sense of cultural striving. Your image does exactly that.
cultural, i.e., that looks back*
Sounds interesting anon. Link the essay.
Alright, fine. Just to clarify, this is more of a casual article, an opinion piece, hence the lack of references. Secondly, the title of the article sounds like a plea for progress, but it's actually a lament that technological advancement can't coincide with the retention of heritage. https://www.sciphijournal.org/index.php/2022/06/28/you-cant-fly-to-space-in-a-corinthian-column/
An idea that exactly addresses this issue is Kenneth Framptom’s ‘Critical Regionalism.’ Framptom saw that the future of architecture was just like OP’s picture and tried to get others to rebel against it by designing with a sense of locality by using local building materials, methods, and paying homage to local history.
Similarly, Christian Norberg-Schulz’s ‘Genus Losci’ also deals with place-making and place identity.
Thanks. More names to add to my list. Similar ideas inspired my article, by the way. Has anyone read it?
I absolutely concur with Byung-Chul Han's thoughts on globalism and globalist architecture. He says that globalism 'violently eliminates all regional differences in order to accelerate the accumulation of capital and communication’. Globalism's violence is a 'de-siting' violence, which 'awakens longing for a site', by which he means orientation and meaning in a given place. More generally, he advocates for a return to ornamentation: ‘the decorative and the ornamental are characteristic of things. They are life’s way of telling us that life is about more than mere functioning.’
Is this all laid forth in “Non-things” by Han? I’ve read Psychopolitics, In the Swarm, Agony of Eros, Palliative Society, and Transparency Society, but I haven’t come across this idea in those.
These sentiments are in his Capitalism and the Death Drive, but also, if I recall, his Non-things. Both are great. In fact, Non-Things is one of my favourite non-fiction books. The issue with Han, however, is that he does tend to repeat a lot of his ideas, which you may find grating. Non-things is sufficiently varied and has a lot of new takes though.
his ideas are too scattered, but they are good ideas. does han have good secondary? or perhaps is there a work that encompasses good political ideas alongside insightful ideas like hans for when a society is sick?
I agree with you there, but the reason I liked Non-things is because it's so much more cohesive and well argued than his other books. It flows better as well. I'm not sure about your question, but, honestly, I'd try looking at the work of Patrick Curry, a scholar I know very well and with whom I'm in regular contact. His work ranges from ecophilosophy to the enchantment of art. He regularly critiques modernity. He's also a Tolkien scholar, if that floats your boat.
liking tolkien is unavoidable as im catholic.
i dont know about this. he feels like schumann music. perfect in itself perhaps, but totally unfit for responses to complex stirring techniques. am i wrong or does curry have ideas on how globalism and capitalism can be overcome?
Curry isn't a 'real' (whatever that means) social theorist or an architect, but he writes a lot about 'the Megamachine', which he took from Lewis Mumford. He was also a student of Zgymunt Bauman. He's written plenty of scholarly articles on modernity, has written a book on ecological ethics, and regularly critiques the harms of Western civilisation (while not being misanthropic or anti-West) through the lens of enchantment/wonder. Nothing specifically on globalism and capitalism, everything I just said relates in some form or another. Anyway, it was just a casual suggestion.
It's frustrating, I'm trying to figure out a way to verbalise my desire to live in surroundings that present me with enriching and even poignant human and non-human designs, as well as those of gods and demons. The ancient world was brimming with such images. Think of the Assyrian Lion Hunt of Ashurbanipal, Egypt's hieroglyphs; the Greco-Roman fascination with statuary, particularly the human nude, as well as its focus on verism; and Medieval gargoyles and vanitas sculptures; the Renaissance frescoes, especially those of the Sistine Chapel; and the Baroque period's rich and bountiful ornamentation. At the very least, I want to see more statuary and beautiful art installations harkening back to the past.
I want to read more about such works in terms of broader concepts and impetuses, but my searches are never fruitful. I can only point to ideas such as the ancients' greater connection with nature/myth, love of beauty, etc., but this is all too vague and broadscale. Are there any more specific and concrete terms that can narrow things down?
Apologies, that last paragraph is too muddled. I feel that discover more specific concepts will help me understand why the past looked like this.
Brutalism's Best Architects by Owen Hopkins is pretty interesting. It's mostly a showcase of Brutalism archetiteture across the world in a coffee book format, but it also does a great job explaining Brutalism history and it's legacy as a philanthropic philosophy
Bump!! This is a cool thread!! Does anyone have any fiction reccs with architecturally interesting worlds?
Art Deco by Eve Weber
I did my bachelor's thesis on Heidegger and the interpolation of his thoughts on modernist architecture, with the accent on socialist modern arch. in East Europe.
Nice thread, read some names of authors and titles I know, many I of them I hear for the first time and am interested to learn more about.
I hope I figure out a way to save this thread for later when I'm in the actual mood to read about architecture.