Prospects for an Ethics of Architecture by Taylor William M.;Levine Michael P.;Solomon Joan;

Author:Taylor, William M.;Levine, Michael P.;Solomon, Joan;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group

4.2 Natives of Tierra del Fuego on the frontispiece of Robert Fitzroy’s Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of Adventure and Beagle (1839). Image © Corbis.

Accompanying this exercise are discriminations and pairings of concepts and things like nature and humankind. There are also different views of humankind as either a living creature like any other, or a uniquely social being. In the story of the primitive hut these are paralleled by opposing (a) the primitive’s perception of needs (for shelter, cover and warmth) and (b) constructions fulfilling those needs (four posts, a roof and walls). An additional dichotomy is formed by opposing (c) an environment which is largely antagonistic or threatening and (d) the primitive’s sensory apparatus and physical body, which perceives discomfort and provides for its remedy. In Laugier’s parable of human habitation something is always missing from the primitive’s surroundings, so that ‘architecture emerges out of a growing awareness of the meaning of absence and the sensations it produces’ and the manner of understanding this gives rise to (Taylor 2004: 31–32). By this account architecture grows from the fundamental division of human experience (a psychological parallel might be something like a split personality). Humans are creatures simultaneously both directed towards the environment and impacted upon by it. They are also, more importantly, spontaneously generative of all conceivable responses to environmental stimuli and so, at least partly, autonomous, distinct from their natural surroundings.

Husserl likewise casts human experience in a perennial and largely dialectical manner so that for Perez-Gomez (following Husserl’s thinking) buildings come to perform an adaptive role and should lead to ‘an understanding of one’s place in the world’ (2006: 109). For both Perez-Gomez and Vesely, transcendental phenomenology conjures up a particular kind of human being. It is a distinctive subject with the unique potential for experiencing the built environment, but one faced with specific choices for doing so. The ‘complex desire that defines humanity’ and that leads human beings to self-understanding is also what permits ‘alternatives for architecture’ (Perez-Gomez 2006: 2). Among these are ‘materialistic and technological’ choices of the kind illustrated by extravagant or self-indulgent buildings or the current fashion for ‘hi-tech’ designs. These are all options highlighted and counterpoised by the one path leading to genuine dwelling. This situation results in buildings designed primarily to manifest intangible concepts of ‘efficiency, economy, commodity, and entertainment value’. They facilitate perfunctory (though profitable) and cost-effective (though entertaining) behaviour, but fail to enhance life through means of a ‘transcultural quest for beauty’ (Perez-Gomez 2006: 5). According to this narrow view, they fail to serve what are presumed to be timeless and universal desires.

The transcendental phenomenologist reads between the lines of architectural discourse but doesn’t like what they find. They see ‘crisis’, ‘conflict’ and ‘division’ and an ever more narrow emphasis on the quantifiable elements, the ‘type’ and ‘function’ of buildings – all terms made synonymous with an impoverished modernity. Derived from a history of ideas about the built environment, their theory is drawn from perceptions of modernity’s rationalist tendencies and seemingly perverse desires for objective, scientific and technological certainties.

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