On Architecture

by Fred Rush

Architecture is a philosophical puzzle. Although we spend most of our time in buildings, we rarely reflect on what they mean or how we experience them. With some notable exceptions, they have generally struggled to be taken seriously as works of art compared to painting or music and have been rather overlooked by philosophers. In On Architecture , Fred Rush argues this is a consequence of neglecting the role of the body in architecture. Our encounter with a building is first and foremost a bodily one; buildings are lived-in, communal spaces and their construction reveals a lot about our relation to the environment as a whole. Drawing on examples from architects classic and contemporary such as Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, and exploring the significance of buildings in relation to film and music and philosophers such as Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, Fred Rush argues that philosophical reflection on building can tell us something important about the human condition.

Genres: Architecture

184 pages, Paperback

First published October 9, 2007

Reviews

[Marie · Rating 4 out of 5]

It gets an extra star just for having explained the concept of "hapticity" in an architectural context to me. I'd been wondering about it far too long.

[Nat]

This is a fine introduction to topics in the aesthetics of architecture.

The book makes a big show at the beginning about the importance of a phenomenological as opposed to formalist approach to thinking about architecture, but it's hard to see how that approach makes a substantial difference in terms of the kinds of things that actually get said about architecture in the book. It's most present in the discussion of the work of Steven Holl, who explicitly uses phenomenological concepts in designing his buildings.

There is an interesting chapter on architecture's status at the bottom of the fine arts totem pole, and worthwhile discussions comparing architecture to music (it is "frozen music", according to Schelling), and to film (via a discussion of Wenders's Wings of Desire).

The final chapter is a criticism of le Corbusier-style urban utopianism as well as "the new urbanism" that inspired towns like Seaside, Florida. These are pretty soft targets.

I might just be ignorant of the relevant literature, but it doesn't seem philosophers have yet started seriously arguing about central architectural concepts like "form" or "space" or whatever in the way they argue constantly about representation or expression or meaning or truth in other arts.

[Lindsay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Philosophically intense, but really cool...