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Heaven and Earth
Festschrift to Honor Karsten Harries |
Vol. 12, No. 1
August 2007
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Conceptional design
and editing: |
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Eduard
Führ |
Organisation,
editorial assistant and layout: |
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Ehrengard Heinzig |
Karsten Harries |
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CV
"The
Bavarian Rococo Church
– Between Faith and Aestheticism"
New Haven, 1983 (Yale University press New Haven and London)
from the "Virtual Archive
of texts and papers on
the theory and history of architecture (D.A.T.A.)"
digitalized by kind permission of Yale University Press
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Editorial |
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Karsten Harries'
Theory of
Architecture |
Ludger Schwarte |
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Architecture, the Event of Representation.
On Karsten Harries' Architectural Philosophy |
Achim Hahn |
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Dimensions
of Imagination (for Karsten Harries) |
David Kolb |
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Borders and Centers in an Age of
Mobility |
David Seamon
& Enku Mulugeta Assefa |
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Karsten Harries' Natural Symbols as a Means for Interpreting
Architecture: Inside and Outside in Frank Lloyd Wright's
Fallingwater and Alvar Aalto's Villa Maeira |
James McQuillan |
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Karsten Harries: Beyond
Care – An
Architecture of Love |
Hagi Kenaan |
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The Ground's
Hidden Surface |
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Theory of Architecture |
Gunter Dittmar |
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The (Endless)
Question of Architecture
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Robert Alan Hahn |
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Heidegger, Anaximander, and the Greek
Temple |
David Summers |
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Horizons, or Infinities without End |
Eduard Führ |
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Field and World.
The Phenomenality of Phenomenons in Architecture
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David Leatherbarrow |
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Architecture,
Ecology, and Ethics |
Dalibor Vesely |
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From Typology to
Hermeneutics in Architectural Design
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Mohammad Reza Shirazi |
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Of Space and Language |
Burkhard Biella |
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"Thierischer als jedes Thier"
– An Attempt at
Heaven and Earth, Architecture, Utopia und Terror in Twelve Steps |
Heidi Helmhold |
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"Invisible Houses"
– Two Artists' Positions |
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Psychological
and Mental Aspects of Architectural Theory |
Harald Deinsberger |
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Living and Housing Structures between Introversion and Extraversion |
David Greusel
& Eric
Jacobsen
& Michael Metzger |
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Architecture as Moral Art:
Surveying the Moral Dimension of Architecture |
Christian Holl |
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Illusions of
Immaculateness |
Kenneth Frampton |
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Intimations of Tactility
Excerpts from a Fragmentary Polemic |
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Landscape and Earth |
Rolf Kühn |
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Earth and Landscape –
From a Radically Phenomenological Point of View |
Hans Friesen |
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The Development and The Relations of Town and Country
in Europe
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A Cultural-Philosophical Reflection on the Two Lebensraums of Man |
Arie D. Graafland |
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The Composition of the
Garden and the Choreography of the Body |
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Time and History of Architecture |
Juhani Pallasmaa |
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The Space of Time
– Mental Time in
Architecture |
Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann |
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The American Voice.
German Historians of Art and Architecture in Exile in the United
States |
Joseph Rykwert |
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On the High-Tech
Style |
Katharina Fleischmann |
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Telling Stories by Embassies?! National Representation
by Architecture – The Example of the Indian Embassy in Berlin |
Diana Soeiro |
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Spatial Belonging
– Living in the
Architectural Space |
Andreas Degkwitz |
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Closing the Gap
between Cultures –
The Building of
the Information, Communication and Media Center Cottbus (ICMC/IKMZ)
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Heaven and Earth |
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Karsten Harries
"South Shore", chalk on paper |
"Langhorne Pavillion"
Architectural Design: Edward F. Knowles |
abstracts: |
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Karsten Harries' Theory of Architecture |
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___Ludger Schwarte
Basel |
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Karsten Harries claims that architecture itself is not a form of
celebration, but rather an invitation to celebrate, an occasion for
the sensorial unification of oppositions, the scene where an ideal
community may gain presence. With this approach, Harries has
produced a visionary contribution to the preparation of
architectonic events.
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Paper in German |
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___Achim Hahn
Dresden |
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Mein Thema war die Einbildungskraft,
Imagination oder Phantasie. Sie gehört zu den menschlichen
Grundvermögen. Wie sie innerhalb der Architekturtheorie fruchtbar
gemacht werden kann, dies habe ich eher als eine Aufgabe zu
formulieren versucht, als es schon zeigen können. Bei der uns heute
geläufigen Rede vom „Entwerfen in Bildern“ scheint es mir
angebracht, diese Frage zunächst hinsichtlich ihrer angemessenen
Tiefe und Fruchtbarkeit zu stellen, um sie gleich richtig in den
Blick zu nehmen. Karsten Harries ist diesen Weg gegangen. Die
Architekturtheorie ist seit den Tagen des Vitruv weiterhin
angewiesen auf die großen und bleibenden Erkenntnisse der
Philosophie, der Ethik, Ästhetik und der Metaphysik.
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Paper
in German |
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___David
Kolb Eugene, Oregon |
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A
centerless sprawl of development replaces the older opposition of
cities to small country towns. In some places the sprawl pulls
itself together into Edge Cities; in others it just spreads. Its
economic, social, and political difficulties are well known. Sprawl,
coupled with current design and building practices brings a global
uniformity that to many it is a prime example of modern and
postmodern "placelessness." In response to uniformity and formless
sprawl, many theorists urge the creation of resistant places. In
this essay I contrast and criticize two such strategies, Kenneth
Frampton's bounded enclaves, and Karsten Harries' centered
communities. Can their proposals succeed in a mixed pluralistic
world of mobile people and equally mobile styles and references? |
Paper in English |
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___David Seamon
& Enku Mulugeta Assefa
Manhattan, Kansas USA |
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This article uses two seminal 20th-century houses – Frank Lloyd
Wright’s Fallingwater and Alvar Aalto’s Villa Mairea – to examine
the natural symbol of inside and outside, which for Karsten
Harries (1988, 1993, 1997) is one important lived relationship
sustaining successful architecture and place.
“[T]o hold that there is nothing that transcends human beings
and speaks to them, that reality itself is mute and meaningless,
means nihilism. If there is to be an alternative to nihilism, it
must be possible to make some sense of and learn to listen to the
language of things.” Karsten Harries (1997, p. 133)
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Paper in
English |
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___James
McQuillan
Gaborone, Botswana |
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Karsten Harries has written that Heidegger tried to see beyond the
question of homelessness in 1951, and yet, Harries repeats that the
situation has now changed. This transformation has several notable
aspects, but the one that Harries has not commented upon is that of
love. If one opens any contemporary work on architecture, the
question of beauty and love is absent, as if our contemporaries have
never known such concepts, and even if they do, feel compelled to
ignore them.
However the compass needle is now turning, and in the hands of de
Botton and Pérez-Gomez, their recent works indicate that their
perspectives are widening. Both celebrate the concept of love in
architecture – that architecture is not exclusively the call to
provide shelter, but meaningful shelter. Their recent works demand
answers from us all, and this paper represents one such answer.
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Paper in
English |
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___Hagi
Kenaan
Tel Aviv |
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"Working in philosophy – like work in architecture…" Wittgenstein
writes, "is really more a working on oneself… on one's ways of
seeing things." This paper shares a similar intuition. It is written
with the conviction that an understanding of the nature of the
visual is crucial for architectural theory. Hence, in responding to Karsten Harries's call for "a new postpostmodern geocentrism", the
paper examines the implications which such a geocentrism might carry
for our understanding of the visuality of our world. The paper
argues that the ground is a crucial dimension of the visual and yet
one that easily eludes our thinking precisely because of the
non-frontal manner in which it meets our gaze. Furthermore, it shows
that the concrete ground in which the human body is implanted is a
constitutive condition for the possibility of the visual. Ground's
surface not only supports the stable posture of bodies, not only
marks the place where seeing reaches its end, but is a concrete
condition that makes our seeing possible. Recognizing the importance
of the ground's visual role, a new range of questions opens up: What
kind
of
spectatorship – of gaze – is called for by the unique visuality of
the ground's surface? How can an architectural object acknowledge
its own horizontal projection, its shadow? What would it mean for
architecture to respond to the non-frontal dimension of the visual
space? How can architecture allow the hidden surface of the ground
to become part of the way we live?
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Paper in English |
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Theory of
Architecture
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___Gunter
Dittmar
Minneapolis |
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For many disciplines it is the role of a sub-discipline – Theory –
to tend to and advance the field’s disciplinary structure and
knowledge base through which it defines itself and its identity as a
field. In architecture it would be the responsibility of academia,
in particular scholarship in the theory of architecture, to explore
and begin to evolve such a structure.
Yet, there is no such Theory in architecture, there exist only
theories! They consist mostly of speculation, manifestos, or
criticism; personal interpretations or positions on formal aspects
influenced by prevailing ideologies, cultural issues, or stylistic
concerns.
There is little that transcends time and place.
And so the question of architecture remains…
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Paper in English |
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___Robert
Alan Hahn
Carbondale |
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In
the Epilogue to “The Origin of the Work of Art,” Heidegger asks us
to reflect again on Hegel’s pronouncement that art can no longer
count on the side of our highest vocation. Is it still possible for
art to function as an essential and necessary way in which truth
happens which is decisive for our historical existence? If art can
no longer provide this truth, the question certainly remains why
this is so. But, according to Heidegger, the truth of Hegel’s
judgment has not yet been decided. No final verdict has been given.
Why? Because “behind this verdict,” says Heidegger, “there stands
Western thought since the Greeks, which thought corresponds to a
truth of beings that has already happened.” Thus, for Heidegger,
there is still a promise for the future because there was such a
happening of truth in the past. For Hegel, the happening of the
truth in the past was not the highest truth of being, just
the highest truth available at that stage in history’s progress. And
so, there is no need for Hegel, as there is for Heidegger, to seek a
return to this philosophical Garden of Eden, this original and
primordial accord. For Heidegger, who does not subscribe to the
particular historical progress that Hegel identifies, the fact of
Presocratic philosophy is the testimony to the highest truth of all
time, since it is the truth of Being in all of its obfuscating
disclosure. Since there was, long ago, a primordial accord for the
earliest of earlycomers, there may still be yet a revival for the
latest of the latecomers. But, what if Heidegger is mistaken in his
attribution of this accord, named for Anaximander as to xreon
(and for Heraclitus alêtheia, Parmenides eon, and so
forth), Heidegger’s project seems to collapse.
The fragment of Anaximander testifies to a vision of nature’s
self-regulating mechanism. There is a cosmic justice that appears in
the cycles of nature. The justice appears, not as an arbitrary or
contingent fact, but rather as to xreon, as “necessity”
itself. Human being, and human meaning, find a place in this
context. But Anaximander’s cosmic vision, as we explore here, is not
the self-unfolding of Dasein, a truth that is revealed in human
being. The truth for Anaximander reaches outward, it announces the
origins of cosmology in which humans seek to grasp what is
absolutely external to ourselves, while, at the same time, it
affirms our capacity to do so. Anaximander invites us to reject a
vision of Dasein’s self-disclosure, and embrace instead the
metaphysically real that is outside myself.
Anaximander thus offers an example of a "Denken" which lacks
"Geborgenheit". For Anaximander deconstructs the dome of the
universe under which "Dasein" felt safe and "geborgen".
His universe is no longer the warm cover of the mantle of the
heavens, nor the safety of the goddess arching over mankind, but the
unfathomable depth of the circling celestial bodies, wheels of
cosmic fire somehow separated off from a more original, more
primordial fire. The cosmos is not a dome, and not spherical, but is
rather cylindrical, containing cylinders within cylinders. The
cosmos is a living, growing – perhaps fire-breathing – tree. What
then of Heidegger’s project in the light of the new horizon that
appears from our re-thinking of Anaximander and the Greek temple?
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Paper in English |
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___David
Summers
Charlottesville |
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In
the Preface to Being and Time, Martin Heidegger summarizes
the aim of the investigation upon which he and the reader are about
to embark – an investigation Heidegger himself never completed – as
“the Interpretation of time as the possible horizon for any
understanding whatsoever of Being”. His first English translators,
John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, immediately warn the
English-speaking reader in a note that for Heidegger the word
“horizon” has meanings they will find unfamiliar. “We tend to
think”, they write, “of a horizon as something which we may widen or
extend or go beyond; Heidegger, however, seems to think of it as
something which we can neither widen nor go beyond, but which
provides the limits for certain intellectual activities performed
‘within’ it”. Time, we might rephrase Heidegger to say, is the one
condition – the horizon – beyond which we cannot go, under which the
question of Being must inevitably and always be asked.
This paper explores the intellectual and art historical precedents
for these modern understandings of horizon.
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Paper in English |
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___Eduard Führ
Cottbus |
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Im Rückgriff auf
Wahrnehmungspsychologie und –physiologie geht der Autor der Frage
nach, was eigentlich die Phänomenalität von Architektur ist, wie sie
entsteht und worin sie besteht.
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Paper
in German |
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___David
Leatherbarrow
Philadelphia |
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Two visions of our common world compete with
one another in contemporary architecture. The first assumes that the
city or the urban environment presents us with what is common, and
commonly held to be good. Contrasting sharply with this notion is
the idea that the environment is what we all share, that the natural
world is the comprehensive framework of what all people and things
hold in common. Behind these visions are two interpretations of
human existence; in the first, there is the world-view normally
called anthropocentrism (which puts man at the center of things), in
the second, biocentrism (which puts man in the context of other
living things, as if there were no center but a widely extended
range). The conflict between these alternate conceptions takes
institutional form in the opposition between individual experience
and scientific understanding, still more broadly, between
subjectivity and objectivity. In architecture the corresponding
distinction would be between art and nature, the first seen as a
domain of unpredictability and originality, the second of regularity
or law.
Yet, I suspect that anyone who gives this alternative more than a
little thought would realize the choice is a false one – at least in
our field. In truth, architecture cannot be either artificial or
natural because each built work is necessarily both. For this
reason, I think, we are compelled to seek ways of avoiding the
choice, at least of not being disoriented by it, of not reducing
architecture to either, as strident versions of formalism (art for
its own sake) and environmentalism so often do. Escaping the
alternative is not simple, however, for ways of balancing these two
views are far from clear. Nor is it immediately apparent how
manifestations of the two – the city and nature – can exist as
aspects of one continuum.
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Paper
in English |
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___Dalibor
Vesely London |
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The
interest in typology as a new design strategy was probably one of
the most influential challenges in the post second world war
development of architecture. In a situation dominated mostly by a
narrow modernist agenda, based on structural and functional
determinism, typology appeared as a healthy corrective to the
deterministic vision of architectural order and even more to a
growing relativism of design principles and values. However the new,
more subtle and critical thinking, did not in the end change the
naïve objectivism of most modern trends. What brought typology on
the scene and to such a relative prominence?
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Paper in English |
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___M. Reza Shirazi
Cottbus |
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Undoubtedly, architectural thoughts of Martin Heidegger have
affected theory of architecture during last decades and his
influence on architects and architectural theory is not limited to
phenomenology, but other attitudes such as post-structuralism,
deconstruction, as well as folding and virtual architecture.
However, discussion on the architectural features of Heideggerian
thought is mostly based on “Building Dwelling Thinking” and
concentrates on his refers to the Greek temple in “The Origin of the
Work of Art” and also his interpretations of the concepts such as
“thing”, “gathering”, and “poetical” in his texts entitled “The
Thing”, “Language” and “…Poetically Man Dwells…”. Here, I will try
to focus on his later text “Art and Space” and show how he
elaborates his unique notion on space and place referring to his
previous thoughts and discussions.
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Paper in English |
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___Burkhard Biella Duisburg |
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Im Lichte
des Himmels bauen wir an und auf der Erde; dem Dunkel des Himmels
verdankt sich mancher Traum, der den Entwurf des Neuen, einer
besseren Welt auch, initiierte ebenso wie Visionen von Destruktion
und Vernichtung. Diese Zusammenhänge umkreist und durchkreuzt der
vorliegende Versuch, der vor allem die Utopie, um die es in Zeiten
der Spaßgesellschaft merklich still geworden ist, dem (politischen)
Denken als Korrektiv gegen inspirationslose und lobbyabhängige
Polittechnokratie wieder ans Herz legen will. Im Zentrum steht dabei
die Architektur, die – neben der
Literatur – als die
utopische Kunst schlechthin gelten kann, denn selbst das Gebaute
noch enthält ein „Stückchen Utopie“. |
Paper in German |
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___Heidi Helmhold
Cologne |
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In
The Ethical Function of Architecture Karsten Harries develops
his theory of Two Houses. A house is built with real, visible
matter, but contains an Invisible House. From a
phenomenological viewpoint the Invisible House is the
spiritual architect of the form, aesthetical conception and interior
of physical architecture, in the sense of Martin Heidegger’s
worldliness (Welthaftigkeit) as reified in his house in
the Black Forest (Schwarzwaldhaus). In this vein I present
two positions of the contemporary art scene, exemplified by the
Himmelstreppe (Stairs to heaven) built by Munich-based artist
Hans Jörg Voth during 1985-1988 in Mârhâ, Morocco; and the
installation Beyond My Chair, by Shanghai-based artist Rolf
Kluenter, inspired by his time in Nepal und presented during the
Sixth Shanghai-Biennale 2006.
Both artists deal with Invisible Houses, but in different
ways. In Voth’s Himmelstreppe the Invisible House acts at the
same time as a disruptive and constructive influence. The staircase
constructed in the desert of Morocco follows the principles of
Euclidian precision architecture, verticalizing space and landscape
as is characteristic of a sedentary culture. This contrasts with the
life style of the nomadic Berbers in that area and their conception
of architecture and space. Living in tents means to live in
horizontal space, in intense social relations and in local
transitions. The Invisible House inscribed in the black tent
of the Berbers is that of smooth space (Deleuze/Guattari).
The Himmelstreppe conflicted with the Invisible House
of the nomads, and has remained a source of irritation. In the words
of Deleuze and Guattari, in A Thousand Plateaus: there is an
inherent conflict between an arborescent and a rhizomatic conception
of space.
At first glance Beyond My Chair seems to be an installation
from a village in the Himalayas. But behind the strange appearance
of the chair lies the strange appearance of Nepal's disrupted
political culture. The concrete material everyday routines of a
traditional culture are blended with the insignia of an overthrown
royal dynasty, in 2001. In Beyond My Chair two Invisible
Houses are colliding.
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Paper in German |
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Psychological and Mental Aspects of Architectural Theory |
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___Harald Deinsberger
Graz |
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Der Mensch als wohnendes Individuum befindet sich in einem stetigen
Spannungsfeld zwischen Introversion und Extraversion,
d. h.
-
zwischen dem Rückzug in die Intim- oder Privatsphäre
und der Öffnung nach außen, zur Umwelt respektive
Öffentlichkeit,
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zwischen dem
Bedürfnis nach Schutz, sowohl in
physiologischer als auch in psychologischer Hinsicht, und dem Bedürfnis nach Kontakt
bzw. Interaktion auf mehreren Ebenen wie
beispielsweise der wahrnehmungsbezogenen, der sozialen, der
bio-physiologisch, der gestalttherapeutischen, der
handlungstheoretischen etc.,
-
zwischen
kontemplativen, auf die eigene Person
konzentrierten Phasen und kommunikativen, auf Sozialkontakt,
Geselligkeit oder Gemeinschaftlichkeit gerichteten Phasen.
Wenn
nun diesen bipolar divergierenden Phasen des Menschen im Zuge der
Konzipierung von Wohnbaustrukturen Rechnung getragen werden soll, so
ist klar, dass sie dort wie auch in den baulich-räumlichen
Gegebenheiten des Wohnungsumfeldes eine Entsprechung finden müssen.
Im Idealfall findet sich eine positive Kongruenz zwischen den Verhaltens-/Benutzungsstrukturen und den
räumlich-physischen
Strukturen. Doch wie kann eine solche positive Kongruenz
beschrieben
werden? Und welche Konsequenzen haben negative Formen der Kongruenz? Wie gestaltet sich generell die Beziehung Mensch-Wohnung-Umfeld
unter diesem Spannungsfeld? Und welche Rolle spielen dabei die
wohnbaustrukturellen Parameter, die der Art und Intensität dieser
Beziehung zugrunde liegen?
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Paper in
German |
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___David Greusel
& Eric
Jacobsen
& Michael Metzger
Kansas City / Pasadena /
Annapolis |
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Based on a presentation given at the national convention of the
American Institute of Architects in 2005 and 2006, and at three
regional conferences, the authors have collected survey data from a
broad sample of North American architects on the moral dimensions of
architecture. The survey measures architect's preferences along 40
distinct "tensions" in design (between, for example, the desire to
renovate versus the desire to start anew). This paper will discuss
the tensions and their meanings, display the results of the surveys,
and will draw out specific observations from the aggregated results.
This paper will assert that there is a distinct moral dimension in
architecture which exceeds building code requirements that buildings
be safe for human occupancy. The survey results will assist the
authors in exploring some of the nuances of this assertion as they
find expression in actual practice.
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Paper in
English |
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___Christian Holl
Stuttgart |
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The allurement of immaculateness, either in geometric forms or in
perfect surfaces, has not lost its attraction. Even in the layout
and design of cities we trust its promise to free us from
contradictions and to resolve complexity. But the urban reality is
far from keeping this promise. Possibly this is exactly the
character of immaculateness: it refers to something we might wish,
albeit unattainable. Hence it can be used to exercise power over
others, who then have to subordinate themselves to a future end or
ambition. This paper argues that we have to find ways to free
architecture and urban design from this notion of future perfection.
To achieve this it is not sufficient to stage a formal counterdesign,
which eventually makes use of the same mechanism as its object of
criticism. Instead we should use the idea of a cyclical time and
periodically mutating architecture to understand the simultaneity of
spaces aborning and in decay, within which freedom can unfold. This
concept of space is far closer to modern society’s complexity than
that of a beautified cityscape.
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Paper
in German |
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___Kenneth
Frampton New York |
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This polemic
is both fragmentary and dialectical. Thus while it moves to resist
the forces of reaction, this by no mean assures immunity against
absorption or against those aspects, lying latent within, that would
tend to gravitate towards the reactionary in their turn. Nonetheless
it seeks to return architecture, or for that matter all plastic art,
to a more concrete and tactile poetic. It looks towards the
enactment of a mythic condition that is lived as well as imagined.
In this regard, the vulgar opposition between the figurative
and the abstract, the decorative and the spatial, and above all
between the historicist and the modernist, seems irrelevant to its
concerns, for as Lissitzky wrote in 1923, beyond the constraints of
perspective and the pathos of a false vernacular: “We reject
space as a painted coffin for our living bodies.”
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Paper
in English |
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Landscape and Earth
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___Rolf Kühn
Freiburg i. Br. |
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In rein
phänomenologischer Sichtweise bildet unsere Leiblichkeit mit der
Erde eine ursprüngliche Einheit, die hier im Zusammenhang mit der
Widerständigkeit des Bodens und unserer Bewegungsmöglichkeit
analysiert wird. Mit zusätzlichem Blick auf eine mögliche
„Metaphysik der Geographie“, wie sie die Tradition seit der Antike
kannte, werden außerdem zur Illustration dieser radikal
phänomenologischen Beschreibung einer leiblichen
Elementarästhetik auch die Beispiele der Japanischen Gärten und
der Landschaftsmalerei von Kaspar David Friedrich herangezogen.
Insgesamt soll dadurch ein deskriptiver Rahmen für jede Art von
gelebter Räumlichkeit umrissen werden, wie sie der Bezug zu
Kosmos und Architektur beinhaltet. |
Paper
in German |
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___Hans Friesen
Cottbus |
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Zwei
grundsätzliche Weisen des menschlichen „In-der-Welt-Seins“ sind das
ländliche und das städtische Leben. Stadt und Land werden vom
Menschen als Lebensräume voneinander getrennt und unterschiedlich
gestaltet. Die Abtrennung der Stadt vom Land ist in der Geschichte
vorzugsweise durch gesicherte Grenzlinien vorgenommen worden. Diese
Grenzen, die seit dem Beginn des menschlichen Sesshaftwerdens vor
rund 12000 Jahren (Hamm, 1982, 20) insbesondere als „physische“
errichtet wurden, werden in den letzten 200 Jahren immer weiter
entmaterialisiert und existieren heute weitgehend nur noch als
„vorgestellte“, wie Leonardo Benevolo (1995, 4) gesagt hat. Die nur
vorgestellte Grenze bekräftigt ebenso wie die physische einen
Unterschied, der wesentlich für das menschliche Leben zu sein
scheint und aus diesem Grunde auch nicht aufgehoben werden sollte.
In diesem Aufsatz wird in 6 Teilschritten die Geschichte, die
Gegenwart und die Zukunft der Landschaft und der Stadt in Europa
untersucht und dabei die These vertreten, dass Stadt und Land einen
Unterschied bilden, der im Sinne eines „komplementären Gegensatzes“
verstanden werden muss. Danach dürfen die gegensätzlichen Seiten
sich nicht ausschließen, sondern müssen sich vielmehr ergänzen.
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Paper in German |
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___Arie
D. Graafland
Delft |
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Do
gardens and ballets form an expression of a particular historical
period? And if that is indeed so, then what is the meaning of the
Baroque garden? This essay explores the significance of palace and
gardens of Versailles. I will try to resolve the dualism of
description and explanation by overlaying Versailles, quite
literally, with an analogous structure, a ballet. This additional
level offers us more insight into the meaning of the palace and its
grounds. The exercise consists of superimposing the choreography for
the Balet Comique de la Royne by Balthasar de Beaujoyeulx,
which dates from 1581, upon the somewhat later gardens of Le Nôtre
and the Sun King.
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Paper in
English |
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Time and History of Architecture |
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___Juhani
Pallasmaa
Helsinki |
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Modern architectural theory introduced the idea that architecture
takes place in a four-dimensional space-time continuum, primarily
through the movement of the perceiver. Time is embedded, however, in
the mental constitution of architecture. Karsten Harries writes:
“Architecture is not only about domesticating space. It is also a
deep defence against the terror of time.” Indeed, in addition to
domesticating space for human habitation, architecture also
articulates time; it gives the measureless, placeless and infinite
space its experiential human measure and meaning, and it also gives
endless natural time its human scale.
Time enters artistic making and perception as a psychic regression
to an earlier, archaic mode of undifferentiated perception and
oceanic consciousness. The common view of art and architecture as
projections of a futuristic interest and aspiration for novelty is
thus erroneous. Instead of alienating us from the sense of
continuity, art defends the historicity of culture and human
experience. The origins of fundamental architectural pleasures are
concealed in our very historicity as biological and cultural beings;
aesthetic judgement echoes an evolutionary and existential past.
Besides, all architectural works are collaborations, not only with
numerous experts and craftsmen, but collaboration with the tacit
wisdom of architecture, and the accumulation of unconceptualized
existential knowledge embedded in the constructed world itself.
Joseph Brodsky, the poet, argues: “When one writes verse, one’s most
immediate audience is not one’s own contemporaries, let alone
posterity, but one’s predecessors.”
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Paper in
English |
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___Thomas
DaCosta Kaufmann Princeton |
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There is no single voice, no unified history of art history in the
United States, but many histories. Even if we concentrate on art
history in academic institutions, instead of museums or the trade,
there is no single story to be told. And this situation applies not
only to the topic of this paper, namely art historians from Germany
who worked in exile in the United States, but goes far back beyond
the period 1933-1945 marked by the Third Reich. German-speaking art
historians in the United States expressed themselves in a wide
variety of ways. Not every one of their voices spoke clearly, or, to
put it more accurately, not everyone was heard. There are scholars
who only expressed themselves in part, because they either
intentionally or unintentionally did not give voice to the full
range of their intellectual interests when they were in the United
States. There are also voices which remained unheard, or were heard
by only a few people. The history of German art history in exile in
America is therefore a history of partially as well as fully heard
voices, of heard and unheard expressions. And this situation has had
perhaps unexpected consequences for the further development of art
history in America.
Karsten Harries, coming from the discipline of philosophy, is of
course a huge exception to the point discussed in this essay:
someone who found his voice in the United States, and used it to
reflect perceptively on art and architecture.
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Paper in English |
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___Joseph
Rykwert Philadelphia / London |
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I
take my cue from Karsten Harries’ discussion of Bavarian Rococo
Churches: it accounts for a relatively limited period and region –
the first half of the eighteenth century in South-Western Germany –
during which a great many quite substantial ones were built. They
have in common the contrast between relatively plain exteriors and
interiors which shelter a riot of cunningly lit painted paradisal
spectacles framed in much gold leaf and simulated marble. It is the
tension which makes a style: ‘to communicate a state, an internal
tension of pathos, by means of signs – and that means by the rhythm
of such signs – that is the meaning of any style.’
In that spirit, I want to consider a recent phenomenon, one which is
already closed. It was, if anything, briefer than the Bavarian
Rococo – just over a quarter of a century. The style goes by the
name of ‘High-tech’ and is considered primarily (or at any rate
originally), a British phenomenon – with Parisian and other
‘colonies’.
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Paper in English |
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___Katharina Fleischmann
Cottbus |
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With the decision for Berlin as the capital of the united Germany in
1991, the city became the focal point of national representation.
Not only Germany but also many other nations took the chance for
national representation by architecture or embassy buildings.
Embassies can be seen as representational buildings ‘par
excellence’. On the one hand they take over functions of diplomatic
delegations as representative offices, on the other hand they act as
materialized representations of nations and states. Not just since
the emergence of a public diplomacy, trying to reach the mainstream
and not alone managerial elites by means of mass media,
architecture, design and material vocabulary have important
functions there.
On the example of the new built Indian embassy the article deals
with the production of a national image by architecture as well as
with the perception of the embassy building as a materialized
national representation. A comparison of these two sides of embassy
architecture shows if and how the intended messages of the embassy
building are delivered. |
Paper in
German |
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___Diana
Soeiro
Lissabon |
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During the 1960's and 1970's, Japan went through a huge economic change
making several cities too small for a fast growing population. What
is architecture's place in the city's space? Is architecture
art?
What is the relation between tradition and innovation, architecture
and history? Occupied space vs. empty space? Does an architectural project always reflect a political project?
These questions will be approached using two articles by the Japanese
architects Shinohara Kazuo (1925-2006) and Andô
Tadao (b. 1941). The
first focuses on the architectural role of residential architecture
in urban sites (the "eternal" presence in space, functional
architecture vs. architecture as art, non-functional space as void,
style (yoshiki) and personal creation, the "immeasurable"
character of space). The second uses the "spatial prototype" concept
to stress the importance of architecture as an access to "interior
perspectives".
Both of them offer a similar solution emphasizing personal space
over a chaotic urban environment.
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Paper in English |
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___Andreas
Degkwitz
Cottbus |
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The
ICMC/IKMZ-Building of the Brandenburg Technical University of
Cottbus (BTU Cottbus) housing the library and the multimedia center
of the university is a 32 meter high reinforced concrete
construction covered by a double-shell, glass façade embossed with
stylized graffiti. The ground plan of the building has a curved
outline resembling a clover leaf. The amazing external architecture
continues internally with a spiral staircase extending from the 1st
to the 6th floor, and a striking color scheme (in vibrant yellow,
green, magenta, red and blue) for parts of the floor covering and
walls. The concept of the building allows a flexible and open use
which consciously allows for many work and communication forms. The
colorful and transparent shape of the building is symbolizing the
new media age and as well it’s an intermediary between the
organizational-technical service features and a very sensual design. |
Paper in English |
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