On Place and Space - The Pragmatism of Existentialism -

Transcription

1 On Place and Space - The Pragmatism of Existentialism - SEMESTER B, QUARTER 3, // 04/13/2010 // TU/E EINDHOVEN // 7X700 - PHILOSOPHY AND ARCHITECTURE // DAVE TEN HOOPE // PROFESSOR: DR. JACOB VOORTHUIS //

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3 Contents Contents 3 I - Foreword 5 II - Preface 7 III - Exploring Heidegger 9 III.I - Lining up 9 III.II - Placing place 9 III.III - Space unveiled 10 III.IV - Intersec ng place and space 10 III.IV.I - Poten a 10 III.IV.II - Regions 11 III.IV.III - Intersec on 11 IV - Heidegger for architects? 13 V - Concluding remarks 15 Notes 16 Bibliography 19 Books 19 Webpages 19 Images 19 3 Contents Philosophy and architecture

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5 I - Foreword This essay is an a empt to deal with two interes ng no ons, by way of exploring an equally interes ng philosopher and his thinking; place and space, through Mar n Heidegger ( ). I have chosen to inves gate Heidegger because of his explicit engagement with architecture, through philosophy. He - above all - concerns himself with the ques ons of technology, architecture and dwelling. Because of that I think that Heidegger s wri ngs would be one of the most interes ng philosophies to inves gate given the no ons in ques on; place and space. The essay at hand is structured around the pragma c ques ons which have been raised because of the intriguing subject and the far reaching effects of it. But, however autonomous this essay may look at first hand, it is part of a diptych that explores the pragma c insights in (everyday) topics, being the (concept of the) [human] soul on the one hand and place and space on the other. I would like to thank dr. Jacob Voorthuis for the opportunity of exploring and studying the unmistakably intertwined rela onship between philosophy and architecture and moreover the use of place and space by people in general. I am also grateful about having been shown the introduc on to the pragma c way of thinking about things. 5 Foreword Philosophy and architecture

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7 II - Preface Place and space are topics that have bothered and interested many throughout the history of philosophy and architecture. It is in the nature of human beings to think about these topics. I would argue that as a designer, or an architect it is even crucial to concern oneself with these no ons and to grasp whatever they may hold in order to give answers in a prac cal and useful way. It is therefore not surprising that this essay will deal will the prac cal, rather, the pragma c ques on around these no ons. In order to do so we will firstly inves gate what Heidegger has wri en about it and what others have wri en about him and his wri ngs. Of course this will not be without further interpreta on, i.e. conclusions and even misinterpreta ons. We should therefore approach the subject at hand with cau on, but at the same me we have to thoroughly understand the gravity of it. The essay is structured as follows: first off we will inves gate Heidegger s wri ngs, as men oned above in order to answer the ques on of how is Heidergger s no on of place and space useful to me as an architect? At the end of this essay conclusions will be drawn on the basis of the former and the la er part. 7 Preface Philosophy and architecture

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9 III - Exploring Heidegger III.I - Lining up To Heidegger, place and space are two very dis nct, yet related concepts, as we can read in many of his texts. It is therefore necessary to elaborate on the both of them, separately and of course together. Firstly Heidegger s no on of place will be explored and a er that space will be dealt with, followed by the interconnec on between the two. III.II - Placing place place becomes (...) the very scene of Being s disclosure. 1 Inves ga ng Heidegger does not come without difficul es for he uses well-known, or rather, intui vely used words in a very peculiar way. Words such as thing (Ding), object (Objekt), nearness (Nähe), place (Ort) and space (Raum) get a somewhat different meaning than people are mostly used to assign to these words. To understand what Heidergger thinks and says about place, it is essen al to understand what he says about being, or in Heideggerian terms Dasein. Being-in-the-World in General as the Basic State of Dasein. 2 To Heidegger, to exist means to be. Being, therefore, implies nothing more than to exist as a being in this world, hence Being-in-the-world. This is best to be understood by the following quote: (...) it is contrasted with mere being in something (Sein in...) or insideness (Inwendigkeit), which amounts to a situa on of sheer containment: (...) the rela onship of Being which two en es extended in space have to each other with regard to their loca on in that space. (...) Dasein s own being-in, however, cannot be reduced to anything like this. (...) Being-in is thus the formal existen al expression for the Being of Dasein, which has Being-in-the-world as its essen al state. 3 Being, or Dasein, is thus the most existen al state of living, without further reference or rela on to anything whatsoever; it is what it means to be you as a (human) being. Places are inherent to Dasein. It is crucial to realize that places, according to Heidegger, are created by Dasein and are not given in any sort of way. They (places) are therefore the result of our ac ng in the world. Heidegger gives us the example of a bridge that has been realized along the banks of a river: The [place] is not already there before the bridge is. Before the bridge stands, there are of course many spots along the stream that can be occupied by something. One of them proves to be a [place], and does so because of the bridge. Thus the bridge does not come first to a [place] to stand in it; rather a [place] comes into existence only by virtue of the bridge. 4 For Heidegger, places, like things and buildings, were primarily understood through use and experience. To him, the spot where the bridge was sited was understood differently since the bridge was built. It became in peoples minds the place of the bridge. (...) Chris an Norberg-Schulz has called it the concre za on of space (1971, 6) and Simon Unwin refers to it as the iden fica on of place (1997, 13-17). (...) this is for Heidegger the moment that dwelling is inscribed in place through building. 5 Place becomes therefore a quality 6 that we (as human beings) assign to a certain loca on. It becomes pregnant with judgment, memories and values; it becomes of value to us and in the process gains meaning and significance. Places therefore are not only physical, but also exist in a mental state: Yet even if this is Dasein s primary world, it is not the only world in which human beings engage. (...) he (Heidegger) points to possibili es of dwelling that are not merely instrumental in character. 7 To further illustrate this Unwin gives us an example of a picnic. The organiza on of the picnic is a choreography of small-scale place iden fica ons. In Heideggerian terms a site has been gathered; the picnic has been placed. Numerous places have come into existence by virtue of the picnic. When the meal is packed away and gone, the place of the picnic might live on in the minds of the picnickers. (...) The site of the picnic wouldn t be just ground; it would be remembered as where that picnic took place. 8 9 Placing place Philosophy and architecture

10 III.III - Space unveiled Unless we go back to the world, space cannot be conceived. 9 A er having set out for the explora on of place, we come across space. Heidegger gives us a mul tude of defini ons of space: space, too, is radically mul ple. 10 Space, according to Heidegger, does exist in different ways and on different levels. Two of them prove to be the most interes ng and relevant to the ques on at hand, being space as world space and space as a mode of our existence. 11 The former can best be understood as a container for objects. It applies to the insideness of the container as such: the bench is in the lecture-room, the lecture-room is in the university, the university is in the city, and so on, un l we can say the bench is in world space. 12 (...) space is the pure wherein (Worin) in which posi ons are ordered by measurement and the situa on of things are determined. 13 The la er defini on requires a more elaborate explana on: space is not located in the human subject - as Kant would have us believe. For this subject is not mental (and thus worldless) but spa al (hence in-theworld). This means that space is always already in the world, however veiled its presence may be there. 14 Conclusively he says that spa ality is not discoverable at all except on the basis of the world. For space belongs properly to the world, just as spa ality belongs to being-in-the-world, 15 hence, unless we go back to the world, space cannot be conceived. What Heidegger is trying to say is that space always already exists before we even take no ce of it. We as Dasein are space in itself because we are spa al beings: What Heidegger is trying to capture is the difference between the nominal expression we exist in space and the adverbial expression, we exist spa ally. He wants to describe spa ality as a mode of our existence, rather than conceiving space as an independent en ty. 16 What follows then is that we as spa al beings engage in space and in so doing we create space, or in Heideggerian terms we make room for space: we do not make space ex-nihilo; we can only make room for space because space is already there and we are always already in it. 17 Dasein takes space in. Space is not projected by Dasein, nor is Dasein simply located in space. Instead, Dasein internalizes space and makes something of it. What is made of it is precisely room and leeway. 18 Exactly how we make space out of poten al space is illustrated by the following example of building a house out of (ever exis ng) stones: we can only build a house of stone, because there are first stones in the world. We gather the stones, we arrange the stones and we create the house from the stones but this is only possible because the stones are there; we do not create stones in order to build houses of stone. 19 III.IV - Intersec ng place and space III.IV.I - Poten a place (...) is something that contains space in poten a. 20 As discussed in placing place, place - to Heidegger - is something of a more mental condi on, something personal, valuable and meaningful. Space on the other hand is something very physical even though we are not always aware of it. Does this imply then, that place and space are to be dis nguished and never to be intersected? However in the previous paragraphs these subjects have deliberately been analyzed separately, they are never to be understood without the other; they give each other meaning and significance. In exis ng, [Dasein] has already made room for its own leeway. It determines its own loca on (Ort) in such a manner that it comes back from the space it has made room for to the place which it has reserved. (...) Dasein is (...) responsible for determining its own loca on and for taking in of space (and thus as well for breaking into space). 21 There seems to be an intrinsic connec on between the two, but how is this to be understood? In Doch, was ist der Ort? Heidegger (finally) becomes explicit about the rela onship between the two for he says that place is not found in pre-given space construed as physical-technological space. Space unfolds only from the free reign (Walten) enjoyed by the places of a region. 22 To fully grasp this quota on and what follows a er that, we must first elaborate on Heidegger s understanding of region(s). Philosophy and architecture Space unveiled 10

11 III.IV.II - Regions We take the region itself as that which comes to meet us. 23 Regions - according to Heidegger - are fundamentally broader (in term) and more encompassing than are places. One could say that (certain) places stand on the basis of becoming a region. However, a region is available primarily through the places it harbors - places that act thus as its indicators (Anzeigen). Such indica on contains an element of exhibi on. 24 Like that of place and space it becomes clear that here too is a deep connec on between the two. Where spaces get their room through the existence of places, so do regions form from places. Heidegger illustrates this forming of regions from places by the example of rooms of a house: by their placement in the house, they and their arrangement indicate - betoken and display - the sunny side and the shady side of the house, that is, two of its most important regions. 25 Even though regions are shaped by places, their existence is of another kind, for region: is too massively public to be the mere product of any individual Dasein s cons tu ve ac vity (...) it has too much gathering power. Hence it is something that Dasein is already alongside and that provides (...) a matrix of spa al involvement. (...) Places (...) are essen al to being-in-the-world in two ways. On the one hand, ready-to-hand things do not truly belong somewhere un l they have undergone the implacement that an individual Dasein s direc onality and de-severance (Ent-fernung: removal-of-distance) bring with them: places are essen ally places for such things. On the other hand (...) places are also indispensible to being-in-the-world as the foci of appearance for regions, which present themselves in individual places. (...) we need par cular places to guide us into regions and to situate us there. 26 III.IV.III - Intersec on Now that we have an understanding of what he (Heidegger) means by region, we can go on and elaborate on the intersec on of place and space. It has been made clear that places are formed or rather given birth to by our ac ng, our recollec on of loca ons and by a aching meaning to it. Spaces are the result of our ac ng in a very direct way, physically; space is in essence that for which room has been made (das Eingeräumte) (...) by the thing as a loca on. 27 Space is about crea ng space, as has been stated earlier by saying that we as Dasein, are able to create space because we are spa al beings. Dasein takes space in only so as to break into space more freely. 28 It becomes evident that there is no return to place from space, but from place space is (eventually) generated. It is a one-way street. 29 Place therefore is the most fundamental of the two, if there is a ground, it lies in place and not in space, 30 even though space - as world space - is the most existen al of these two no ons. 11 Intersecting place and space Philosophy and architecture

12 Fig. 1a (upper): Two women in the street; Xochimilco, Mexico City, Mexico. Fig. 1b (up): Casa Gilardi, by Louis Barragán; Mexico City, Mexico. Philosophy and architecture Heidegger for architects? 12

13 IV - Heidegger for architects? Now that we have explored Heidegger s understandings of Dasein, place, region and space we have the tools to go into the ques on of how is Heidegger s no on of place and space useful to me as an architect? As a lead towards this ques on I would like to pose yet another ques on: does Heidegger s no on of place and space pose a problem in everyday situa ons, and if so, how does it do so? This ques on can be answered rela vely easily: as it goes for place, it can prove to be somewhat of a problem. Since place is a very personal experience and the subjec vity of place makes it hard to match one s no on of a par cular place. On the other hand, it is very well possible to compare those no ons. As an example I would like to discuss fig. 1b, Casa Gilardi, by Louis Barragán. This is a well-known house, specifically a well-known scene of a part of the house - being the corridor leading to the (indoor) swimming pool. When talking about this specific loca on, people who have seen this or rather who have been there are able to discuss it and to compare experiences, but how far does this reach? Since this par cular place to me certainly has a different meaning than to others who also hold this loca on to be a place to them. It therefore makes the issue of comparison even harder. Even space cannot overcome this par cular obstacle, since my forming of space by penetra ng the room is different to that of someone else being in the same room. As it goes for the world space of course there is no difference in someone s individual Dasein. Immanuel Kant asked himself three basic ques ons, of which one proves to be very interes ng to us in this par cular situa on; how should we act? It has become clear that Heidegger s no ons of place and space are not without difficul es and are to be understood within a complex context, even though they are in fact really useful to me as an architect. Being an architect - to me - means to be responsible for the qualia of the living environment, i.e. the public realm, the private domain and the limits 31 of them. The defini ons or rather the no ons of Heidegger of place and space can prove to be very handy in this task. If we take place for example, it is first to be no ced that we are not in a posi on to design a place for someone else. To illustrate this I would like to point out to fig. 1a, the two women in the street somewhere in Xochimilco, Mexico City, Mexico. This photograph has been taken in a regular street where the scene that is depicted has not been deliberately designed by any designer beforehand; they - and they alone - made of this loca on a place that is very dear to them. To them this very scene is not any loca on, but has in fact become a place. [This [place] comes into existence only by virtue of these women]. In my engaging in this scene it too has become a place to me; to any wanderer in the city who does not assign any value whatsoever to this par cular loca on, it is just a mere spot in the street, nothing more than a loca on - certainly not a place. Is there no way then, to design a place for someone other than yourself? Well, in a way there is. It has become clear that we cannot design a place for someone else, but we are able to design the tools that will (eventually) make possible the forma on of a place - that we do hope for. 32 In this case one can iden fy the various spa al elements needed for these women to be si ng here; the blind wall, the raised sidewalk, the shade of the tree and the houses, the proximity and even the Nähe of the people surrounding them. The challenge for the architect lies in knowing how such a process of the forma on of a place works. To get to know that, we as architects have to get acquainted with these processes. To be an individual Dasein is to walk this process; to be an architect is to be Dasein, to be Dasein is to be an architect in poten a. In fact we are all architects. For space it is different. As it goes for the space as a mode of our existence, we all create space, some mes even inten onal. As an architect one is able to design rooms, but how can we go about space? In fact, to design a room is to design the process of the forma on of space; by handing someone the opportunity to enter a room and to penetrate it, is to let someone create their own space. So in a way one is able to design space, even though it is in an indirect way, it can very well be inten onal. 13 Heidegger for architects? Philosophy and architecture

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15 V - Concluding remarks As we have seen, Heidegger s no ons of place and space are of a way we usually don t go about it. He makes these concepts more pregnant and some mes gives it new meaning in the same context. It is not surprising then, that to fully understand Heidegger one should get familiar with his vocabulary. To think about the design process in Heideggerian terms becomes therefore complicated. The way people usually go about place, space, room, loca on, self, being, exis ng etc. is some- mes very different from the way we approach the subject(s) at hand. Heidegger has given us the tools to rethink the design process and the consequences that it brings with it. By way of exploring Heigger I was in fact reinven ng my own approach regarding the design process. This essay therefore turned out to be a deconstruc on of this approach, while at the same me it certainly constructed a new, or rather I should say a more refined a tude towards design in general. Ques oning Mar n Heidegger by way of looking at his thinking s from a pragma c viewpoint presents interes ng and I think very essen al insights not only in the design process of an architect, therefore his a tude, but moreover it provides us a way of using (the no ons of) place and space in a different, enriching and a more encompassing way. Every human ac vity from the intellectual to the mundane, considered properly as he (Heidegger) perceived it, derived authority from, and offered opportuni es to explore philosophically, the ever central ques on of being (Dasein) Concluding remarks Philosophy and architecture

16 Notes III.II - Placing place 1 Casey, Edward, S., The fate of place, a philosophical history, Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1998 p. 224). 2 Ibid, p Ibid, p. 245, Sharr, Adam, Thinkers for architects, Heidegger for architects, New York, Routledge, 2009 p Ibid, p. 52, For place is regarded as the result of Dasein s direc onal de-severing, that is, its oriented bringing-close. This is what is indicated by the past par cipial phrase having been placed. Place is not something we come across as something we are simply in; it is what we precipitate by the conjoint ac on of direc ng and de-severing - thus something to which our direct interven on gives rise. There is no place without this interven on. Casey, Edward, S., The fate of place, a philosophical history, Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1998 p Ibid, p. 254 (brackets added). 8 Sharr, Adam, Thinkers for architects, Heidegger for architects, New York, Routledge, 2009 p. 53, 54. III.III - Space unveiled 9 Casey, Edward, S., The fate of place, a philosophical history, Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1998 p Ibid, p A reference can be found here to the influen al existen alist thoughts of Heidegger, being the existen alist as he is, along with for example Arthur Schopenhauer ( ), Søren Kierkegaard ( ), Friedrich Nietzsche ( ) and Jean-Paul Sartre ( ). 12 On Heidegger s Theory of Space: A Cri que of Dreyfus, <h p:// p. 4 reviewed Casey, Edward, S., The fate of place, a philosophical history, Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1998 p. 251, Ibid, p Ibid, p On Heidegger s Theory of Space: A Cri que of Dreyfus, <h p:// p. 4 reviewed The primacy of space in Heidegger and Taylor: towards a unified account of personal iden ty, < h p:// unified...-a > reviewed Casey, Edward, S., The fate of place, a philosophical history, Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1998 p The primacy of space in Heidegger and Taylor: towards a unified account of personal iden ty, < h p:// unified...-a > reviewed III.IV - Intersec ng place and space III.IV.I - Poten a 20 Casey, Edward, S., The fate of place, a philosophical history, Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1998 p Ibid, p. 257, Ibid, p Philosophy and architecture Notes 16

17 III.IV.II - Regions 23 Ibid, p Ibid, p Ibid. 26 Ibid, p. 250, 251. III.IV.III - Intersec on 27 Ibid, p Ibid, p Ibid, p Ibid. IV - Heidegger for architects? 31 not that at which something stops, but as the Greeks recognized, that from which something begins its presencing. Ibid, p Again a reference to Kant has to be made, for we come across a second ques on of him: what do we dare hope for? V - Concluding remarks 33 Sharr, Adam, Thinkers for architects, Heidegger for architects, New York, Routledge, 2009 p. 7 (brackets added). 17 Notes Philosophy and architecture

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19 Bibliography Books - Bor, Jan, Petersma, Errit, Kingsma, Jelle, De verbeelding van het denken, Amsterdam, Uitgeverij Contact, 2000, (1995). - Casey, Edward, S., The fate of place, a philosophical history, Los Angeles, University of California Press, Heidegger, Mar n, Over denken, bouwen, wonen, vier essays, Nijmegen, Uitgeverij SUN, 1999, (1991). - Sharr, Adam, Thinkers for architects, Heidegger for architects, New York, Routledge, 2009, (2007). - Störig, Hans, Joachim, Geschiedenis van de filosofie 2, Utrecht, Uitgeverij Het Spectrum B.V., 1994, (1990), (1985), (1959). - Webster, Merriam, Webster s new explorer dic onary and thesaurus, Springfield, Federal Street Press, Webpages Images - On Heidegger s Theory of Space: A Cri que of Dreyfus, <h p:// reviewed The primacy of space in Heidegger and Taylor: towards a unified account of personal iden ty, < h p:// > reviewed Voorthuis.net: Teaching architecture, architectural theory, history and design., <h p://voorthuis.net/7x700.html> reviewed Fig. 1a: Picture taken in Xochimilco, Mexico City, Mexico on Fig. 1b: Picture taken in Mexico City, Mexico on Bibliography Philosophy and architecture

20 SEMESTER B, QUARTER 3, // 04/13/2010 // TU/E EINDHOVEN // 7X700 - PHILOSOPHY AND ARCHITECTURE // DAVE TEN HOOPE // PROFESSOR: DR. JACOB VOORTHUIS //