Christian Norberg Schulz's Phenomenological Project in Arch

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Christian Norberg-Schulz's Phenomenological
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Elie Haddad
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To cite this article: Elie Haddad (2010): Christian Norberg-Schulz's Phenomenological Project In Architecture,
Architectural Theory Review, 15:1, 88-101
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ELIE HADDAD
CHRISTIAN NORBERG-SCHULZS
PHENOMENOLOGICAL PROJECT IN
ARCHITECTURE
This paper will examine the theoretical
work of one of the major proponents of a
phenomenological approach in architecture,
the historian-theoretician Christian Norberg-
Schulz, examining the development of his
ideas across 30 years. While Norberg-Schulz
started out with Intentions in Architecture
(1963), a work that was clearly inuenced
by structuralist studies, he soon shifted to a
phenomenological approach with Existence,
Space and Architecture (1971), and then with
Genius Loci (1980) and The Concept of Dwelling
(1985). He attempted through this trilogy to
lay down the foundations of a phenomen-
ological interpretation of architecture, with
an underlying agenda that espoused certain
directions in contemporary architecture.
This paper will examine the major writings
of Christian Norberg-Schulz, critically evalu-
ating his interpretation of phenomenology in
architecture in its ambiguous relation to the
project of modernity.
ISSN 1326-4826 print/ISSN 1755-0475 online
2010 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/13264821003629279
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It is paradoxical that the phenomenological
discourse appeared on the architectural scene
after the decline of structuralism and semiotics,
while in philosophy and the humanities, it was
the decline of phenomenology in the 1960s
that prompted the development of structural-
ism. This ambiguous situation may be explained
by the time-lapse between the moment
philosophical ideas are articulated and their
translation into the architectural eld.
Phenomenology owes its main thrust to
Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. Husserl
launched the phenomenological movement
in philosophy with the intent of developing
it into a method of precise philosophical
investigationthat is, a comprehensive new
science, but it was his student Heidegger who
took it into another direction and turned it into
one of the major philosophical movements of
the twentieth century, inuencing all subse-
quent developments in philosophy from Sartre
to Foucault and Derrida. Heidegger trans-
formed Phenomenology into a means for the
questioning of philosophical traditions, a radical
dismantling to be followed by a reconstruction,
with the intent of founding a new fundamental
ontology that looks at the way in which the
structures of Being are revealed through the
structures of human existence.
1
The main thrust of Heideggers philosophy was
developed in his major work, Being and Time
(1927), which constitutes the basis of his
phenomenological approach. Yet, as scholars
of Heidegger remark, his later works, especially
the series of essays The Origin of the Work
of Art (1935), Building, Dwelling, Thinking
(1952) and The Question concerning Tech-
nology (1949),
2
reected a turn in his orienta-
tion from the earlier Being and Time towards a
mythopoeic approach that privileges a direct
reection on the nature of elements, common
to poetic or artistic practice.
3
It was this later
Heidegger who would become inuential
among a number of architectural theorists,
namely Christian Norberg-Schulz, who was
among the rst to attempt to translate this
phenomenological approach in architecture.
Christian Norberg-Schulzs rst theoretical
work was very much inuenced by the
structuralist tendencies of the 1960s,
4
without
being specically anchored to any single source
or reference. Intentions in Architecture appeared
in 1963 and constituted an ambitious project
to develop an overarching system that would
account for the various poles of architectural
activity. The framework for this study included
a combination of scientic ideas derived
from sociology, psychology and semiotics.
Already at that time, he attributed the con-
dition of crisis in architecture to the failure
of modern architecture to take account of
some of the essential factors that give signi-
cance to the built environment, primary
among those the role of perception, in addition
to the importance of history as a source of
meanings.
5
Norberg-Schulzs discussion of perception was
largely inuenced by Gestalt psychology, to
which were also added the socialization of
perception and the process of schematiza-
tion, that is the way in which perception leads
to the construction of an understanding of the
world, based on the pioneering studies of
Jean Piaget in child psychology. From this, he
proceeded to outline a theoretical framework
which would include all the semiotic dimen-
sions. This theory, inuenced to a large extent
by Charles Morriss interpretation of semiotics,
constituted a similar attempt to develop a
comprehensive structurethat is, an archi-
tectural totality that would account for all
the dimensions of architecture: the technical
ATR 15:1-10 CHRISTIAN NORBERG-SCHULZS PHENOMENOLOGICAL PROJECT IN ARCHITECTURE
89
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structure, environment, context, scale and
ornament.
6
It is worth noting that this work
did not list any single reference to Heidegger in
its bibliography, only mentioning him in a single
footnote.
7
A few years later, Norberg-Schulz published a
work with a very indicative title, Existence,
Space and Architecture (1971), followed by
Genius Loci (1980) and The Concept of Dwelling
(1985) which constitute his phenomenological
trilogy in architecture. Existence, Space and
Architecture marked a turning point in Norberg-
Schulzs theoretical project. While his rst
work was based on a structuralist approach
blending semiotics and Gestalt theories,
this work betrayed a shift which would be
translated later into a move towards a
phenomenological approach. In the foreword,
Norberg-Schulz announced, in fact, a new
approach to the problem of architectural
space, attempting to develop the idea that
architectural space may be understood as
a concretization of environmental schemata
or images, which form a necessary part of
mans general orientation or being in the
world.
8
This reference to being in the world
is indicative of this new shift, supported by
several quotations from Heidegger. Still, in this
transitional work, Norberg-Schulz stood on a
middle ground between the structuralist posi-
tions of Piaget, Arnheim and others, and the
phenomenological position represented by
Heidegger and Bollnow.
9
This attempt at
reconciling structuralism with phenomenology
may also be traced in his subsequent works
and never seemed to pose any problems for
Norberg-Schulz.
The major concept in Existence, Space and
Architecture is space. The discussion of space
was motivated by what the author perceived
as a reductive reading of that concept, rst
given currency by Giedion and later used by
others, particularly Bruno Zevi.
10
Norberg-
Schulz qualied space as existential space,
structured into schemata and centres, direc-
tions, paths, and domains; concepts that he
illustrated by concrete examples derived from
multiple sources, from Mircea Eliade to Otto
Bollnow, Gaston Bachelard, Claude Levi-
Strauss and Kevin Lynch. The centre, for
instance, was illustrated by the image drawn
from Eliades discussion on mythology, a
mythical origin traversed by a diagram of the
axis mundi, which represents a connection
between the different cosmic realms.
11
Simi-
larly, the path was related to the idea of
departure and return home, and the division
into the inner and outer domains of
existence, as explained by Bollnow. Norberg-
Schulz also introduced a new concept that
would be expanded later, that of genius loci,
literally the spirit of a place.
12
He identied
four levels of existential space: geography and
landscape, urban level, the house and the thing.
In discussing the house, Norberg-Schulz re-
ferred to Heideggers essay on dwelling and the
etymological roots of building which go back
to dwelling, stressing the role of the house as
the central place of human existence:
The House, therefore, remains the
central place of human existence, the
place where the child learns to under-
stand his being in the world, and the
place from which man departs and to
which he returns.
13
The last chapter discussed the concept of
architectural space which he dened as a
concretization of existential space, illustrated
by a historical survey of various architectural
works, from villages and towns to specic
architectural artefacts, subjected to a classica-
tion in terms of the spatial concepts of centre,
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path and domain, as well as a qualitative
description in terms of their phenomenological
attributes. Existential space was thus dened as
a qualitative space, manifest in the monumental
architecture of the Parthenon as well as that of
the medieval towns, in the dynamic architec-
ture of Borromini as well as in that of the
Renaissance, in the work of Le Corbusier, La
Tourette (Fig. 1) being a favoured example, as
well as in Louis Kahns and Paolo Portoghesis
works.
For Norberg-Schulz, there exist multiple varia-
tions to the concept of architectural space,
but its essential aspects had been obliterated
by some modern works, especially at the level
of urbanism. There, the gural quality of the
street and its variations, the centrality of the
town square and its existential role have all
been ignored by architects, which led to
decient urban environments. In this respect,
he joined Venturi, Jacobs, and Rossi in criticizing
Modern Architecture for its shortcomings,
especially at the level of the urban environ-
ment. As in the case of Venturi, but using a
different approach, Norberg-Schulz returned
to history in its wider sense to give compara-
tive examples of buildings, towns and land-
scapes as examples that naturally incorporate
these qualities of existential space, creating
meaningful and wholistic environments.
Norberg-Schulz reiterated the necessary re-
cognition and understanding of the different
levels of architectural space that form a
structured totality which corresponds to the
structure of existential space.
14
This under-
standing of existential space, ignored by
orthodox modernism reappeared, according
to him, in the work of Louis Kahn, Robert
Figure 1. La Tourette. Photo: courtesy of David Rifkind.
91
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Venturi and Paolo Portoghesi. Portoghesi was
singled out for his supposed mastery through
the application of geometry of the interaction
between different levels of space, resulting in a
balanced relation between the building and its
environment. Norberg-Schulz concluded with
a quote from Heidegger: Mortals dwell in as
much as they save the earth, as a conrmation
of the necessity of re-appropriating the
elements of existential space into the founda-
tion of architecture.
15
Genius Loci
Norberg-Schulz introduced his major opus,
Genius Loci,
16
as a sequel to his previous two
works in architectural theory, despite the
radically different direction that this work took
in relation to the rst. Genius Loci was perhaps
the most inuential of Norberg-Schulzs writ-
ings, as it came out at a time when questions of
meaning, history, and mythology assumed
greater importance in architectural discourse,
in a post-modernist climate that gave back
credibility to these themes. And unlike his
previous studies, this one was more explicitly
concerned with the interpretation of phenom-
enology in architecture as its subtitle indicated,
and as clearly stated in the introduction that
acknowledged the debt to Heideggers ideas,
particularly his essays gathered in Poetry,
Language, Thought.
17
The book cover was quite
indicative as well; in clear contrast to the plain
white cover of his rst book, it featured a
panoramic photograph of the medieval Italian
hill town of Vitorchiano, in the region of Latium
(Fig. 2).
In this photographic essay on architecture, with
its illustrations ranging from the macroscopic
scale of landscapes to the microscopic scale of
architectural details, Norberg-Schulz proposed
to elaborate the constituting elements of a
phenomenology of place, using as a keynote
the poem of Georg Trakl, A Winter Evening,
quoted in one of Heideggers essays. The main
lesson of this poem, as explained by the author,
is the importance of concrete images that
constitute our experiences, represented by
poets, architects and artists. The phenomen-
ological challenge lies therefore in reviving
Figure 2. Vitorchiano. Photo: Author.
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this poetic dimension of things and in re-
establishing the lost connection between the
various elements that constitute our world.
Specically, Norberg-Schulz stressed the con-
nection between the man-made world and the
natural world, historically evident in various
places and environments from around the
world. This relationship is established through a
three-point process of visualization, comple-
mentation, and symbolization.
18
This process
was attributed to Heideggers concept of
gathering. Its last phase, symbolization, plays
a more crucial role in the concretization of
meaning in a place, and in the realization of
the concept of gathering. Norberg-Schulzs
main thesis rested therefore on the marriage
of these two concepts, Heideggers concept of
gathering and the old Roman concept of
genius loci:
The existential purpose of building (ar-
chitecture) is therefore to make a site
become a place, that is, to uncover the
meanings potentially present in the given
environment.
Genius Loci is a Roman concept. Accord-
ing to ancient Roman belief every
independent being has its genius, its
guardian spirit. This spirit gives life to
people and places, accompanies them
from birth to death, and determines their
character or essence. Even the gods had
their genius, a fact which illustrates the
fundamental nature of the concept.
19
In what amounts to a mixing of mythology with
philosophy, Norberg-Schulz proceeded to de-
velop his theory, supported by a litany of well
chosen photographs that depict various condi-
tions and sites, from the historic towns
of Europe to the landscapes of Tuscany,
Switzerland, Finland and Sudan, and from the
characteristic images of people walking in the
Nordic winter snow to barefoot children
posing in their desert village in Sudan. This
photo-historiography, as pointedly analysed
by Jorge Otero-Pailos,
20
also encompassed
select examples of historical periods from
Greek to Baroque and Modern Architecture.
The reference to Greek examples, such as the
iconic Tholos and Theatre of Delphi was
somewhat legitimized and necessitated by the
appeal to the concept of genius loci, with its
mythological aspects that invoke the specic
appropriations of different places by specic
gods, a theme that also brings back Heidegger,
specically his essay on The Origin of the
Work of Art.
21
As for landscapes, Norberg-
Schulz again drew on Heidegger in calling for a
phenomenology of natural place which recalls
the different topological contexts and re-
examines their etymologies in the hope of
uncovering their original meanings:
Whereas valleys and basins have a macro
or medium scale, a ravine (cleft, gorge) is
distinguished by a forbidding narrowness.
It has the quality of an under-world which
gives access to the inside of the earth. In a
ravine we feel caught or trapped, and the
etymology of the word in fact leads us back
to rapere, that is to seize.
22
Norberg-Schulzs personal religious afnities
played a signicant role in the articulation of his
ideas. Thus, it is not only landscape in general that
stimulates a phenomenological understanding of
the world, but specic sanctuaries within the
landscape that create a favourable condition for
intimate dwelling. These sub-places, such as
the Carceri of St Francis near Assisi or the Sacro
Speco of St Benedict near Subiaco, offer
archetypal retreats where man may still experi-
ence the presence of the original forces of the
earth.
23
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Yet what is most surprising in this interpreta-
tion of the environment was Norberg-Schulzs
reductive categorization of landscapes into
three basic types: Romantic (the Nordic region
being its main illustration), Cosmic (dened as
an environment that makes an absolute and
eternal order manifest, represented best by the
innite desert), and Classical (varied yet
orderly, an example of which is the Greek
landscape). Yet these landscapes do not simply
present abstract topological conditions; they
appear intimately connected to certain social
or cultural characteristics, which take the form
of historically determined judgments. Thus, the
Romantic landscape encourages an intimate
relation with the earth where dwelling takes
the form of a refuge in the forest, while the
desert seems to act as a natural framework for
the unifying message proclaimed by religions
like Islam, and the Classical landscape appears
like an in-between condition, a condition of
equilibrium that generates a meaningful order,
and fosters a human fellowship where the
individual is neither absorbed by the totality
(the cosmic order) nor forced to seek his
private hiding place (the romantic world). This
last case offers, accordingly, the best possibility
for a true gatheringfor dwelling in the
Heideggerian sense.
24
These three types of
landscape constitute archetypes, which do
not always present themselves in the pure
form of the examples mentioned, and some-
times lead to complex landscapes, according
to the authorthat is, composite landscapes
such as Naples or Venice, or Brandenburg
where extension is squeezed in between a
sandy moor and a low, grey sky, creating a
landscape which seems saturated by the
monotonous, cheerless rhythm of marching
soldiers.
25
The same reductive approach that was
followed to categorize the various landscapes
was also used to categorize man-made
place, meaning architecture, into Romantic
architecture, Cosmic architecture and Clas-
sical architecture. While Classical architecture
offers itself more easily to categorization, as
it is historically recognized, it is interesting to
note the selective reading of the author
regarding the other categories, which pro-
ceeds from the same geographical determina-
tion applied to landscape. Thus, Romantic
architecture does not indicate a specic style
or period, but an architecture distinguished
by multiplicity and variety, irrational and
subjective, phantastic and mysterious but
also intimate and idyllic.
26
This strange
denition brings together disparate examples
from the medieval towns of Germany to the
vernacular architecture of Norway, even
extending to the work of Guimard and Aalto
in our times. In the same vein, cosmic
architecture applies to works characterized
by uniformity and absolute order and
supposedly nds its best manifestation in
Islamic architecture.
27
The concluding chapters were dedicated to
a selective study of three settlements that
best illustrate these three categories, a study
which, in reality, translates into something in
between a travel guide and an architectural
survey of these three cities: Prague, Khartoum
and Rome. While Prague exudes a romantic
sense of mystery conrmed by the novels of
Kafka and supported by its rich architectural
heritage, the cosmic Khartoum offers the
opposite feeling of an innite landscape
dened by the movement of the sun and
the Nile River. And while Rome was probably
selected to illustrate the third case, upon
closer scrutiny its genius loci appears to
escape any strict denition, and thus emerges
as a complex case which contains every-
thing.
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Norberg-Schulz concluded by a discussion of
the loss of place in the contemporary world.
This is, in essence, the second thesis of the
book, and presents the underlying project of
Norberg-Schulz, which is similar to that of other
theorists who were preoccupied by the dis-
integrating urban condition around the world.
Here Norberg-Schulz presented a pragmatic
assessment of the problem, from the destruc-
tion of the urban fabric to the loss of character
and place. Yet once again, his conciliatory
approach left the issue unresolved, as he did
not take any rm stand regarding it. While the
illustrations accompanying this part showed the
Federal Center in Chicago by Mies van der
Rohe and the Green City by Le Corbusier as
examples of this decient urbanism, the text
reads more like an apology for the Modern
Movement. The author saw this movement, in
fact, as an attempt to give form to a new spirit,
which reects a new genius loci, with the aim of
helping people regain a true and meaningful
existence, even going as far as suggesting that
some of its early manifestations such as Neue
Sachlichkeit, effectively meant a return back to
things.
28
Accordingly, this return to things may
be observed in some of the masterpieces of
modern architecture, such as the Villa Savoye
and the Haus Tugendhat which, despite their
lack of substance and presence, satisfy modern
mans search for freedom and identity. It is only
when moving to the urban dimension that
modern architecture fails to gather and to
create signicant environments.
29
In what amounts, then, to a conrmation of
the theses of his teacher Giedion, Norberg-
Schulz concluded that the underlying basis
of the Modern Movement was profoundly
meaningful and that only at the hands of
some imitators the movement had lost its
objectives. These objectives were again being
rediscovered in this second phase which
proposes to give buildings and places indivi-
duality, with regard to space and character, as
manifested in the works of Aalto, the late
works of Le Corbusier, and most signicantly in
the work of Kahn whose poetic descriptions
come close to Heideggers.
30
A third genera-
tion of architects, composed of Utzon, Pietila,
Stirling and Boll, appeared to him on the right
path towards an architecture that concretizes
this recovery of place.
31
The Concept of Dwelling
The Concept of Dwelling constituted the third
part of Norberg-Schulzs phenomenological
trilogy, still supported by a framework of
semiotic, behaviorist and other studies.
32
In
this work, Norberg-Schulz directly addressed
the issue of dwelling, a concept that was
singled out by Heideggers famous essay. Here,
surprisingly, the subtitle indicated a movement
towards gurative architecture.
33
In the fore-
word, the author announced the basic premise
of the book as the rediscovery of dwelling in
its comprehensive totality, leading towards a
nal overcoming of functionalism and a return
to gurative architecture.
34
The keynote to this
work is given by the Norwegian story of Knut,
a youngster who recognizes, through a sort
of spiritual revelation, his presence in the
forest as a fundamental aspect of his exis-
tence. Two illustrations, a Norwegian forest
and a farmhouse, accompany this introduction,
further evoking this idea of dwelling as a return
to the sources.
35
The Concept of Dwelling was organized into a
structured study that proceeded from the
general outline to the development of the
concept, and again from the macro level of
the settlement to that of the individual
house, passing by the intermediary modes
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of dwelling, urban space and institution. These
four basic modes of dwelling are organized
through two aspects: identication and
orientation. Mingled in the text are various
quotations from Heidegger, but also from
Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, to give a phenom-
enological avour to an otherwise structuralist
work that revives the same concepts derived
from Gestalt psychology, from Kevin Lynch, in
addition to references to the work of Mircea
Eliade on mythology. In focusing his attention
on laying down the foundations of an archi-
tectural language, Norberg-Schulz in fact
returned to the earlier phase of his Intentions
in Architecture, coloured by his more recent
discovery of phenomenology. In this work,
the author re-examined the four categories of
dwelling under the structuralist template
of morphology, topology and typology,
which constituted the organizing structure that
was applied onto the dimension of being:
Mans being-in-the-world is structured,
and the structure is kept and visualized by
means of architecture.
36
And further:
The meaning of a work of architecture
therefore consists in its gathering the
world in a general typical sense, in a local
particular sense, in a temporal historical
sense, and, nally, as something, that is as
the gural manifestation of a mode of
dwelling between earth and sky.
37
Once again, the selection of particular
examples of dwelling at the level of the
individual house is quite revealing of the
authors selective interpretation. The rst
example mentioned was the Hill House by
Mackintosh, lauded for its fullment of the
task of dwelling: to reveal the world, not as
essence but as presence, that is as material and
colour, topography and vegetation, seasons,
weather and light.
38
After the Hill House, the
author turned to vernacular architecture,
particularly to the types of dwelling common
in northern European countries, which were
mentioned by Heidegger (Fig. 3). In addition to
these, Gesellius, Lindgren and Saarinens Hvit-
trask complex (Fig. 4), Behrens house in
Darmstadt, Hoffmanns Palais Stoclet and
Wrights prairie houses, which share little in
common, were seen as good examples of this
interpretation of dwelling.
Yet this time, the critique of the modern
house was more explicit, and the author
recognized its failure to arrive at a satisfactory
solution to the problem of dwelling, for it
lacked the gural quality; it did not look like a
house. Hence, what seems to be the problem
is simply the inability of the modern house to
look like a house, and not, as Heidegger had
alluded to, the inability of modern man to
dwell. Norberg-Schulz expressed here the
hope that the revival of this gural quality, as
evident in many post-modern projects, will
again make dwelling possible.
39
Despite a
cautionary remark against the fall into eclecti-
cism, the book ends on an optimistic note that
this recovery of the gural quality would lead
to a recovery of dwelling, in which pheno-
menology would play a major role as the
catalyst for the rediscovery of the poetic
dimension in architecture.
40
Conclusion
Despite its wide dissemination in architectural
circles during the 1980s, Norberg-Schulzs
phenomenological interpretation received re-
latively little critical overview, apart from the
usual book reviews, most of which were
HADDAD
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Figure 4. Hvittrask. Photo: Author.
Figure 3. Traditional House in southern Germany. Photo: Author.
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generally positive.
41
The strongest attack
against this interpretation of phenomenology
came indirectly from Massimo Cacciari,
who criticized the na ve interpretations of
Heideggers concept of dwelling.
42
Cacciari, in
clear opposition to Norberg-Schulz, read in
Heideggers essay a recognition of the impos-
sibility of dwelling, rather than a desire for a
nostalgic return to pre-modern conditions of
dwelling:
No nostalgia, then, in Heideggerbut
rather the contrary. He radicalizes the
discourse supporting any possible nos-
talgic attitude, lays bare its logic, pitilessly
emphasizes its insurmountable distance
from the actual condition.
43
The difculty of interpreting Heideggers later
writings has been raised by some critics. Hilde
Heynen, for instance, saw in these different
interpretations of Heidegger an opposition
between two ideological positions, utopian-
nostalgic and critical-radical, represented re-
spectively by Norberg-Schulz and Cacciari. In
this opposition, Heynen recognized the de-
ciencies of both positions, the rst for its
simplistic reduction of the problematic to a
question of architectural form, the second for
its assimilation of the condition of anxiety as a
generative principle.
44
It is precisely this aspect that constitutes the
weakest point in Norberg-Schulzs theoretical
proposition: his desire to translate phenomen-
ological discourse into a tool for the genera-
tion of architectural forms that recreate a
semblance of meaningful environments. In his
interpretation of Heidegger, Norberg-Schulz
did not go beyond the surface, satisfying
himself with the later works of Heidegger,
without attempting to answer some of the
problematic issues raised by its critics. Further-
more, phenomenology, in Norberg-Schulzs
understanding, was continuously supported
by a structuralist framework, which puts into
question the very possibility of overcoming the
duality of mind/body as phenomenologists
claim, using this structuralist framework as a
pretext for one of two possibilities: a return to
vernacular architecture as an archetype for an
idealized dwelling on the one hand, or an
espousal of a gurative post-modernist
architecture as a second option. Even in his
last publication, Norberg-Schulz did not pro-
pose anything beyond a synthesis of these
various concepts from structuralism to phe-
nomenology into yet another work that
attempts to give a comprehensive account
of architecture from all periods and regions.
45
Heideggers later reections on art and
architectureand the mythopoeic turn that
he tookmay also be partly responsible for
this particular interpretation of phenomenol-
ogy, which was translated by some as a
nostalgic return to an authentic dwelling
and, consequently, as a retreat to certain styles
or periods. The later developments in archi-
tecture and the various appropriations of the
gurative have shown that the crisis of the
object, of which Tafuri had spoken, cannot be
simply resolved by such articial measures. It is
questionable whether other phenomenological
interpretations would be more successful in
resolving the problematic condition of con-
temporary architecture, without addressing the
current conditions of its production. A phe-
nomenological approach, in the real sense of
the term, cannot be reduced to a formal
manipulation of specic parameters such as
tactility or vision.
46
And despite the occasional
masterpieces which can bring forth intense
spatial experiences that distinguishes them
HADDAD
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from ordinary productions, such as the work
of Peter Zumthor, it is questionable whether it
is possible to raise architecture as a whole to
this level of aesthetic resolution, within a
practice that continues to separate architecture
from its social and political dimensions, which
was the historic condition for the generation of
meaningful environments.
47
Notes
1. Dermot Moran, Introduction
to Phenomenology, London/
NY: Routledge, 2000, ch. 6.
2. Martin Heidegger, Being and
Time, Harper, 2008; The
Origin of the Work of Art
and Building Dwelling
Thinking are included in
the collection of essays pub-
lished as Poetry, Language,
Thought, Harper, 2001;
The Question Concerning
Technology in The Question
Concerning Technology, and
Other Essays, Harper: 1982.
3. Moran, Introduction to Phe-
nomenology, p. 209.
4. Structuralism largely devel-
oped out of linguistic stu-
dies, the branch of
knowledge concerned with
the study of language itself.
Initially, the main source of
inuence was the Swiss
linguist Ferdinand de Saus-
sure, who left no work of
his own, other than the
collected notes published
by his students after his
death, as the General Course
on Linguistics, a work that
was rst translated to Eng-
lish in 1959. Saussure in-
itiated a major change in
the study of language, in-
sisting on a synchronic ap-
proach rather than the
usual diachronic approach
by looking at the structure
of the language and its rules
of operation. He also pos-
ited that language is a con-
structed system, and not
naturally inherited or meta-
physically inspired, thus
opening the way for a
deeper probe into the very
foundations of this system,
which directly affects the
way we construct our real-
ity and the world. Although
in his collection of notes,
the term structure was
never used by Saussure,
but rather system, later
readers of Saussure came
up with this terminology
which became a standard
bearer for other studies,
and rst among those, the
work of Claude Levi-Strauss
in anthropology. For more
on this see Francois Dosse,
Histoire du Structuralisme,
Vol. 1, Paris: La Decouverte,
1991; and John Sturrock,
Structuralism, London: Black-
well, 2003.
5. Christian Norberg-Schulz,
Intentions in Architecture,
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
1965, pp. 2122.
6. Norberg-Schulz, Intentions
in Architecture, pp. 101102.
7. Peter Collins wrote a sharp
critique of this early work
of Norberg-Schulz, warning
against the dangers of
assimilating architecture
within overwhelming the-
ories of philosophical or
linguistic nature. See his
book review of Intentions
in Architecture in the Journal
of Architectural Education,
21, 3, 1967: 810.
Existence, Space and Archi-
tecture, NY: Praeger, 1971,
p. 7.
9. Otto F. Bollnow, author of
Mensch und Raum, 1963 as
well as a number of works
on German existential phi-
losophy and hermeneutics,
among others.
10. Norberg-Schulz, Existence,
Space and Architecture, p. 12.
Space and Architecture,
p. 114.
Genius Loci: Towards a Phe-
nomenology of Architecture,
New York: Rizzoli, 1980.
The book was rst pub-
lished in Italian as Genius
Loci-paesaggio, ambiente, ar-
chitettura by Electa in 1979.
It is interesting to note here
that the Italian subtitle dif-
fers from the one chosen
99
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for the English edition and
does not include the refer-
ence to Phenomenology.
17. Martin Heidegger, Poetry,
Language, Thought, New
York: Harper & Row, 1971.
18. Norberg-Schulz, Genius Loci,
p. 17.
p. 18.
20. For a critique of Norberg-
Schulzs visual approach,
see Jorge Otero-Pailos,
Photo[historio]graphy: Chri-
stian Norberg-Schulzs
Demotion of Textual His-
tory, Journal of Society of
Architectural Historians, 66,
2, 2007: 220241. Otero-
Pailos argues that the
author created a new
type of history book, one
which relies on images as an
alternate narrative which
was paradoxically anti-
historical, in that it avoided
critical reection by conceal-
ing its own historical con-
struction.
21. In this text, Heidegger re-
ferred to the Greek temple
as a major example of the
signicance and role of a
work of art. Norberg-
Schulz dedicated one of
his essays to discuss this
text by Heidegger, pub-
lished as Christian Norber-
Schulz, Heideggers Think-
ing on Architecture, Per-
specta, 20, 1983: 6180.
p. 37.
p. 40.
p. 46.
p. 47.
pp. 6869.
pp. 7173.
pp. 191192.
pp. 194195.
pp. 195198.
pp. 198200.
32. This work did not conclude
the series on this topic, as
the author published an-
other work, titled Architec-
ture: Presence, Language and
Place, which reiterated the
same themes discussed in
the previous books.
The Concept of Dwelling: On
the Way to Figurative Archi-
tecture, New York: Rizzoli,
1985. Again, the original
publication came out rst
in Italian, under Electa, one
year prior.
34. In another essay titled On
the Way to Figurative Archi-
tecture, Norberg-Schulz
sheds further light on his
interpretation of the gura-
tive, using this concept to
support recent post-moder-
nist projects by Venturi,
Graves and Botta, among
others. See Christian
Norberg-Schulz, On the
Way to Figurative Architec-
ture, in Norberg-Schulz,
Architecture: Meaning and
Place, New York: Electa/
Rizzoli, 1988, pp. 233245.
35. Norberg-Schulz, Concept of
Dwelling, pp. 912.
Dwelling, p. 29.
Dwelling, p. 30.
Dwelling, p. 89.
Dwelling, p. 110. Two draw-
ings were used to illustrate
the gural quality: the rst
a drawing by Louis Kahn,
the second by Michael
Graves, titled On the
Way to Figurative Architec-
ture, pp. 132, 134.
Dwelling, p. 135.
41. See for instance: Harris
Forusz, Review of Genius
Loci, Journal of Architectural
Education, 34, 3, 1981: 32;
one of the critical reviews
of Norberg-Schulz is by
Linda Krause, Review of
Architecture: Meaning and
Place, The Journal of the
Society of Architectural Histor-
ians, 50, 2, 1991: 197199.
Also, a critical yet cursory
discussion of Norberg-
Schulzs concept of dwelling
can be found in David
Leatherbarrow, Roots of
Architectural Invention, Cam-
bridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1993.
42. Massimo Cacciari, Eupali-
nos or Architecture,
Oppositions, 21, 1980: 106
116. This article was writ-
ten as a review of Tafuri &
Dal Cos Architettura con-
temporanea, for the journal
Oppositions. Architettura con-
temporanea appeared in
1976, and was translated
HADDAD
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as Modern Architecture in
1979. Cacciaris essay in
Oppositions coincided with
Norberg-Schulzs original
publication of Genius Loci in
Italian.
43. Cacciari, Eupalinos or Ar-
chitecture, p. 107.
44. Hilde Heynen, Architecture
and Modernity, Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 1999.
Architecture: Presence,
Language, Place, Milan: Skira,
2000.
46. This appears to be the case
for instance of Steven Holl
who, despite the stimulating
experiences that his archi-
tecture creates, can not claim
to resolve the contradictions
born out of operating within
a certain economic mode
that determines a priori the
conditions for experiencing
and using these buildings.
This reduction of phenom-
enology to a sensory or
embodied experience of
space is advocated for in-
stance by Fred Rush in his
book On Architecture, New
York: Routledge, 2009.
47. Botond Bognar articulated
a similar position in his
essay Toward an Architec-
ture of Critical Inquiry,
Journal of Architectural Edu-
cation, 43, 1, 1989: 1334
in which he came to the
conclusion that the recent
phenomenological appro-
aches in architecture are
legitimate in insisting on a
meaningful dimension, yet
they lack the strategies for
critically evaluating the
given social reality which
determines the realms of
intentionality and intersub-
jectivity (p. 22).
101
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