2-1 Introduction
In this section, we will concentrate on „phenomenology in architecture‟. The main questions are: What is called „phenomenology in architecture‟? What are the basic points in this regard? Are there any common features for architectural phenomenologists? How do architects and architectural scholars understand „phenomenology‟? Is phenomenology in architecture a „school‟, an „approach‟, or a „movement‟?
Obviously, because of the variety of the persons who have phenomenological approach to architecture, it is not possible to concentrate on all of them. The persons who are discussed here have been selected because of their relationship to the already studied philosophers on one hand, and their relationship to our case study Tadao Ando on the other. Norberg-Schulz is explicitly Heideggerean and one of the main features who has produced great body of research and discussions on „phenomenology of architecture‟. He employed phenomenology as his departure point in interpreting and understanding architecture and remained always a believer of it. Juhani Pallasmaa as an architect and theoretician is more Merleau-Pontean and has written extensively on phenomenology of architecture. Frampton, deeply influenced by the Critical Theory of Frankfort School, is a leading feature in this regard and his ideas like Critical Regionalism and Tectonics have clearly phenomenological implications. Holl is a Merleau-Pontean architect who tries to use his thoughts as ideas and concepts in architectural works and projects.
Moreover, Norberg-Schulz and Frampton have written on Ando and their writings will be analyzed and criticized in coming sections. At the end of every section, a critical review will be presented to show the abilities and shortcomings of the discussed ideas.
This study will be supported by ideas and thoughts of other scholars who have presented deep phenomenological understanding of architecture, such as Karsten Harries and Eduard Führ.
Thus, this study enables us to prepare a general view to the „state „ of phenomenology in architecture, find its relationships to „phenomenology in philosophy‟, think about the probable common aspects and concerns, criticize them, and finally draw a somehow comprehensive view to „phenomenology in architecture‟.
2-2 Phenomenology in Norberg-Schulz
2-2-1 The necessity of phenomenology
Norberg-Schulz remarks that his search on qualitative theoretical foundations started with „Intentions in Architecture‟ (1963), in which he took Egon Brunswik‟s „Psychologie vom Gegenstand her‟ as the point of departure. But he found that psychology, sociology, and static mechanics were not satisfactory until he read the Bollnow‟s „Mensch und Raum‟ (1963) and then Heidegger‟s concept of Dasein and its capability of defining existential foundations of architecture. He states that “Phenomenology appeared to me as a method well suited to penetrate the world of everyday existence, since architecture is in fact at the service of totality, which the term „world of life‟ implies, a totality that eludes scientific procedure” (Norberg-Schulz, 2000, p.15).
In his book „Architecture: Presence, Language, Place‟ (2000) Norberg-Schulz presents a brief philosophical evocation to show the necessity of a phenomenological approach to the man and environment. He expresses that Descartes‟ „cogito ergo sum‟ led to a different understanding of the life-world relationships. Through this belief, the world of life divided into the opposition between subject and object. Engaging the things as objects, man establishes a quantitative relationship with them, and finds them essentially mechanical. Therefore, the world of life is reduced to mere abstractions and space is understood as a system of coordinates devoid of any qualitative determination. In brief, a thing is reduced to its quantitative extension in length, width, and depth, instead of consisting of its quantitative characters of hardness, weight, and color.
According to him, before Descartes, Galileo tried to employ a mathematical approach to the world in understanding the natural rules. This fact led to the loss of understanding of the life-world as a combination of heterogeneous phenomena. “In an architectural context, this corresponds to the exchange of experienced space, i.e., the place, with mathematical space, where there are no differences between up and down” (Ibid., pp.67-68).
Moreover, Newtonian physics were also based on axioms detached from real life. His laws were mostly pointed to unreal and nonexistent circumstances. For example the „law of inertia‟ which alludes to „any body not subject to outside forces‟ evidently examines a situation that never happens in world-life. „Any body‟, in fact, denies the diversity of the
entities and considers that all places are equal. These quantitative attitudes towards the things led to an overwhelming atomism that remained dominant in all the aspects and dimensions of the modern life. Thus, a tendency towards qualitative interpretation of the world came to forth.
Norberg-Schulz starts reviewing this tendency with the theory of Gestalt. According to the theory of Gestalt which acknowledges the inability of science to explain the essentials, the whole determines the parts, however, is quite different from the sum of the parts. Shortly after the discovery of Gestalt theory, Husserl published his book „Crisis of the European Sciences‟ and found the roots of this crisis in a loss of meaning in relation to life, which has reduced to the mere science of facts, as the result of mathematicization of nature. Norberg-Schulz underlines the most important points of his concept „world-life‟ and struggling against the dominant atomistic approach as follows:
“According to his thought, perception does not consist primarily of a generalization of the givens, but rather it presupposes a priori an awareness of that which is typical or categorical. Putting one self in accord with the world of life, then, means moving in prefamiliarity with what exists. Perception, however, is not limited to preconfidence; it also transcends the subjectivism of the senses, allowing the most hidden ones to emerge, and it contemplates things as participating in a legislative principle, which also corresponds in the final analysis of the Gestalt theory. At the same time, Husserl recognized himself in the fracture between subject and object, remaining imprisoned in the traditional theories of the psychology of consciousness, instead of cleaving to the „things themselves,‟ and he therefore realized only in part that eidetic reduction which is the goal of phenomenology as a science of the essence of things” (Ibid., p.70).
In this regard, Norberg-Schulz affirms that Martin Heidegger considered thinking being as „Dasein‟ or „being there‟, and understood all the things of the world as reciprocal mirroring. Moreover, he stated that every experience entails precognition, and Da-sein is actually such a precognition. “Man, like very thing around him, has a world, and, even though the awareness of it develops through experience, a number of basic structures that exist a priori constitute the stimulus for an understanding of the environment and place. Precognition, therefore, has to do with that part of things, which persist, or better yet, their way of being. Or, in other words, as human beings, we have the capacity to
understand a thing as such, thus, according to Heidegger: “House is that which already was, and not so much the single building that serves such a purpose… The being house of the house is not observed…but was already seen previously.” This is why we can exclaim: „What a lovely house‟ or „What an interesting tower!‟” (Ibid., p.71)
Thus, Norberg-Schulz states that precognition plays a very vital role in our understanding of the environment. In this way, for example, to say „what a high tower‟
denotes that man has seen a tower before; moreover, he has a somewhat clear idea about the tower and the height of the towers. If not, in the case of encountering a tower as an anonymous entity, the question would be „What is this‟? On the other hand, if that man has not seen some towers, with which he can compare the quality of „height‟, then he was unable to attribute the adjective „high‟ to it. Thus, this is the precognition that makes our understanding of the environment meaningful.
Norberg-Schulz asserts that the source of inspiration for Merleau-Ponty is the theory of Gestalt, by which he proposed a corporeal attitude towards the world. For Merleau-Ponty
“to perceive is to penetrate into a universe of things that bring themselves into presence, and the problem of the world lies in the fact that everything is already present.
Perception therefore is each time a re-creation of the world. That which is perceived is known through its Gestalt, which is given as the origin of perception and thus it is not the mathematical rule of the thing, but its physiognomy” (Ibid., p.73). Norberg-Schulz explains that this approach implies that the awareness of the things is based on their appearance or „eidos‟. In other words, every thing is perceived through its Gestalt, presented with its boundary or „outline‟ or „figure‟.
According to Otto Friedrich Bollnow, another phenomenologist to whom Norberg-Schulz refers, the specific „atmospheres‟ constitute the essential background that permeates life and the world. In „Mensch und Raum‟ (1963), he presents a phenomenology of space and takes into account “both directions and the given places of nature and the being-in-space of man and finally of the house as a building and its various parts” (Ibid., p.74).
The above mentioned review shows Norberg-Schulz‟s approach to phenomenology and his interpretation of its characteristics and potentialities, and presents a somewhat clear view of his understanding of phenomenology, elaborated in his various texts. To give a
more comprehensive vision to this subject, I will introduce the basic themes concerning phenomenology and its importance in architecture.
Phenomenology as a path
Norberg-Schulz considers phenomenology a method, not a typical kind of philosophy. It concerns the possible experience of the world, not based on a given „a priori‟, but a path which intends to capture the structures and the meanings of the world of life. Thus, it
“does not aspire to replace the natural sciences, but rather to replace the relationships and the entire body of principles that those sciences express” (Ibid., p.21).
Life-world, to the things themselves
Norberg-Schulz states that Husserl‟s term „life-world‟ alludes to the concrete world that is directly present, and we can experience it. This experience is both „natural experience‟
and „precognitive‟ which intends to capture „the things themselves‟. “Since we live in the company of these things well before we acquire an analytic approach to them, natural experience is neither subjective nor objective, and does not establish a separation between body and awareness” (Ibid., p.19). Thus, the natural experience, which concerns the world of life, is fundamentally qualitative.
On the other hand, Husserl in his book „The Crisis of European Science and Transcendental Phenomenology‟ argues that the unilateral quality of science keeps man isolated from the things themselves. Norberg-Schulz argues that the scientific approach to the „thing‟ isolates and abstracts it from its reality and context, and considers it as a mere „construct‟ composed of sensations. Moreover, we exclusively concern ourselves with beings, and reduce reality to its „measurable‟ aspects. Thus, man is reduced to measurable needs, and the world becomes a multitude of measurable resources. This quantitative approach leads to alienation from things and from our fellow men, and the lack of true contact. “Thereby man is even alienated from his own nature, and becomes mere „human material‟” (Norberg-Schulz, 1979, p.46).
On the contrary, “Phenomenology took as its point of departure Husserl‟s slogan „to the things themselves‟ and his recognition that modern science did not mange to help our understanding of the concrete „life-world‟, (Lebens-welt)” (Norberg-Schulz, 1985, p.16).
The life-world is understood as a world of characteristic, meaningful things, not of sensations, and phenomenology is the way which “approaches things with that same naturalness with which they present themselves, and therefore not as separate entities,
but as manifestations of an essentiality or a way of being, which can only be understood in relation to other ways of being, and which persists over the passage of time, without any loss of identity” (Norberg-Schulz, 2000, p.20).
In this regard, Norberg-Schulz expresses that phenomenology which takes the life-world or the world of life as its point of departure, contrary to the natural science which is based on abstracting the phenomena of the same quality, consists in “the interaction of phenomena that are qualitatively different, and which should not be analyzed and explored separately, but rather understood as unified phenomena” (Ibid., p.59). In other words, phenomenology tries to approach the things and above all the places in their context, in their relationships to the other things, and not isolate them from the environment. On the other hand, the life-world is the combination of the man-made and natural phenomena, and phenomenology analyzes the places considering both aspects together.1
Phenomenology, unity of object and subject
Norberg-Schulz argues that phenomenology takes being-in-the-world as his point of departure and unifies subject and object. On the other hand, it stands against two prominent attitudes: psychology and sociology on one side, and semiology on the other.
He finds both of them insufficient and claims that “since existential spatiality comprises the social as well as the linguistic dimensions, a phenomenological investigation of man‟s being-in-the-world will offer a realistic basis for the effort to equip him with a new place” (Norberg-Schulz, 1988, p.193).
Gestalt phenomenology and precognition
Norberg-Schulz believes that phenomenology is concerned with the „identities that are immediately present‟ and with their interactions. In this way, he intends to allude to the precognitions which are the fundamental needs of comprehension. Comprehension consists in precognition; “Indeed, it is precognition that makes experience possible and that defines „how‟ of man in the world. The way of being of man corresponds to the
1 In this regard, Karsten Harries remarks that phenomenologists insist that the life-world “cannot and should not be accepted as something that simply has to be” (Harries, 1991, p.10). In other words, our life-world is not necessarily in an ideal shape, it may be misshaped by history. He argues that the life-life-world in which we do live is deeply colored by cultural and personal prejudice, by „history‟. However, “We are not so immersed in our historical situation that we cannot criticize aspects of it by appealing to aspects of human nature, including deep-rooted needs and desires that have challenged little if at all in the course of recorded history. This gives a limited validity to appeals to human nature, or to natural symbols, or to architectural archetypes” (Ibid.). In this way, it is not safe to elevate the life-world into a timeless essence, an eternal entity. We should challenge it, to make it better. We should always think of an ideal.
precognition and therefore presence is structured accordingly” (Norberg-Schulz, 2000, p.125).
He states that Gestalt theory clarifies the function of precognitions successfully. The
„Gestalt laws‟, are principles that condition the „eidos‟ and figures, and constitute their Gestalt quality. In fact, the gestalt laws are the precognitions that are used in our perception of the environment. Indeed, we apply these laws unconsciousnessly. Thus,
“The laws of Gestalt have a constant value both for „small‟ unities and for „large‟
unities, and this is true at all times, even when the use changes” (Ibid., p.137).
In this connection, Norberg-Schulz relates phenomenology to Gestalt and point to
„phenomenology of Gestalt‟. He states that the phenomenology of Gestalt is based on three categories: first, „the structure proper of the environment‟, which deals with the relation of earth and sky in the given environment, second, the „principles‟ of Gestalt or the „Gestalt laws‟ which are based on pre-cognition, and third the „structure of use‟, which is rooted in the experience of living. (Ibid., p.141).
In addition, Norberg-Schulz introduces another aspect of the precognition concerning the
„universal‟ aspects of the works of architecture. He finds a fundamental ground common to all the people which makes understanding possible. According to him, „universal‟
denotes to the basic structures of the life and place. Basic structures rooted in our being-in-the-world need new interpretations and understandings. On the other hand, basic structures are synonymous with „fore-conception‟. “Fore-conception is that which allows for the possibility of seeing something as something; that which, in our discussion, allows for the comprehension of the structure of the surroundings” (Norberg-Schulz, 1996, p.75).
Phenomenology as seeing
Norberg-Schulz finds phenomenology rooted in „seeing‟. “„Seeing‟ means, above all, recognizing something as something” (Ibid., p.viii). Thus, he emphasizes both the
„thingness‟ of the work and the „recognition‟. However, to „recognize‟ implies a „fore-conception‟, as the basic manner of being. When we visit a new place, he remarks, we recognize differences, without exactly distinguishing them.
Phenomenology as mirroring
Norberg-Schulz, using the Heideggerean term „mirroring‟, states that the object of phenomenology is an understanding of the ways of being, as manifestations of
„mirroring‟. Thus, “The phenomenological approach implies that every „thing‟ is understood in the light of a mirroring, which, in our context, implies above all a clarification of the relationship between earth and sky, since things are understood as a presence. The relationship never appears directly, and it principally has to do with a place in its totality” (Norberg-Schulz, 2000, p. 91).
Phenomenology and the loss of the language of architecture
Norberg-Schulz reminds us of the necessity of phenomenology as the way by which we may recover the language of architecture. He argues that the slogan „form follows function‟ denies any typological ground and states that forms are constituted anew and over again. The abolishment of language is the result of the sever tendency towards the abstraction and reduction of reality to the measurable, rather than emphasizing on concrete space. Thus, we become a foreigner among the things, and the faculty of imagination which is the ability of understanding the figures which are rooted in typology is killed. In this regard, Norberg-Schulz refers to the criticism of Husserl of the Western science and its slogan „to the things themselves‟. “To the things themselves implies that we recover man‟s natural understanding of things as modes of being-in-the-world, that is, as gathering. Accordingly we have to develop our poetical intuition and intend the world in terms of qualities rather than quantities…. By means of phenomenological method, we may „think‟ about things and disclose their „thingness‟….
Phenomenology ought to become the gathering middle of education, and hence the means which may help us to recover the poetic awareness which is the essence of dwelling. What we need, in general, is a rediscovery of the world, in the sense of respect and care… We can rescue the things if we first have taken them into our heart. When that happens, we dwell, in the true sense of the word” (Norberg-Schulz, 1985, p.135).
Phenomenology as the unity of life and place
In the preface of the book „Nightlands‟ Norberg-Schulz (1996) states that the phenomenological method of the book is neither explaining building as a result of influences, nor arranging it according to stylistic developments, “Instead, I consider building as it occurs as part of a local context and attempt to see it as it indeed is. This approach is grounded in the belief that buildings necessarily represent the world to which they belong, at times through a simple „participation,‟ at others as a kind of
„explanation.‟ In general, we can assert that all buildings and settlements gather a
world, and that we can only understand them in these terms” (Norberg-Schulz, 1996, p.vii).
He claims that phenomenology does better than psychology and sociology, because they do not consider the unity of life and place, and it is also better than semiology, because phenomenology is based on what the things themselves are, and thus releases us from the cul-de-sac of semiology. He finds the unity of place and life in this statement that „life takes place‟, and this shows that the life is fundamentally related to place, and the true analysis of place evidently embraces that life which place admits it.
In this connection, Norberg-Schulz states that place can not be described by means of analytic, scientific concepts, because science intends to make abstracts from the given to gain objective knowledge. In this way, the everyday life-world becomes neglected.
Phenomenology, as a „return to things‟ can play a very important role. However, he mentions that “So far phenomenologists have been mainly concerned with ontology, psychology, ethics and to some extent aesthetics, and have given relatively little attention to the phenomenology of the daily environment” (Norberg-Schulz, 1980, p.8). Therefore, he finds a phenomenology of architecture urgently needed.
2-2-2‘Genius loci’, spirit of place
Obviously, „genius loci‟ plays an essential role in the established theory of Norberg-Schulz concerning architecture and its analysis, so that his seminal book on phenomenology in architecture is titled „Genius Loci, towards a phenomenology of architecture‟ (1980). In this regard, it appears very important to present a clear outlook to this theme as much as possible. In this connection, the most important characteristics of this term will be considered:
The term „genius loci‟ is an ancient roman belief and indicates that “every 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”
(Norberg-Schulz, 1979, p.45).
Accordingly, “ancient man experienced his environment as a revelation of definite „genii‟” (Ibid.).
“The „genius‟ thus corresponds to what a thing „is‟, or what it „wants to be‟”
(Ibid, 45).