Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Back to "articles"
At the same time, dwelling is just as much a means as an end. There will
always be a certain tension, a kind of imperfection, between what we
wish, do, and make. The significant questions are how do we dwell in our
own particular situations and how can we shape the quality of our
dwelling for better or worse? Heidegger links the quality of our dwelling
to the quality of our building, since an effective building arises from a
genuine sense of sparing and preserving (see Foltz, 1995, pp. 159-63).
In other words, people are immersed in their world, and this immersion is
qualitative, subtle—in many ways, ineffable. Thus a walk through a
well‑tended garden evokes a different state of being than a similar walk
through an uncared‑for garden or an unsightly vacant lot. Similarly,
entering a church evokes a different human stance than entering a
nightclub or a shopping mall or an empty street or a street filled with
human activity. One aim for aim for architects is to become sensitive to
these experiences and to become more aware of how specific qualities of
the built environment enhance or stymie particular human experiences.
Heidegger argues that, in our modern age, human dwelling is reduced and
so, therefore, is building. His explication of why we dwell less fully today
is complicated; he suggests that, in part, it is because we manipulate and
demand from our world rather than meet it an attitude of sparing and
preserving‑‑i.e., allowing it to be and become. In this sense, a key to
dwelling is letting ourselves and the world be, and this letting‑be includes
the ways we build, see, understand, and think.
It is this need for letting‑be in designing and understanding that marks the
value of Thiis-Evensen and Alexander's work for a deeper, more
grounded, understanding of dwelling. Both architects seek concrete means
for identifying and describing built qualities that sustain and strengthen
the quality of dwelling. Through evoking one style of sparing and
preserving, Thiis-Evensen and Alexander provide ways to see and think
more clearly, which, in turn, might lead to better designing and building.
What is it that the roof, the floor and the wall do? As a motion,
the roof rises or falls. The walls stand up or sink, the floor spreads
out, climbs or descends. In this way, weight is also implied. That
which rises is light, that which falls is heavy. And if the roof is
bright and soft as a sail, it is open. If it is dark and of stone, it is
closed. If the openings in a wall are tall and narrow, they ascend, if
they are short and wide, they sink. A soft and fine floor is warm
and open, but if it is hard and coarse, it closes and is heavy ( ibid.,
23).
One way in which the wall expresses this dialectic between openness and
closure is through its windows, which are said by Thiis-Evensen to
contribute to a building's sense of inside and outside in that they announce
the mode of life within the building. Windows are "always an expression
of the interior to the world at large" (ibid., 251):
Figures 4 & 5
In his explication of the floor, wall, and roof, Thiis-Evensen assumes that
there are various shared existential qualities‑-insideness-outsideness,
gravity-levity, coldness-warmth, and so forth‑-that mark the foundation of
architecture. Thus, a wall with windows whose lintels are emphasized
suggests a sense of upward movement and levity, just as a wall with
windows whose sills are emphasized will feel heavier and in relationship
to the ground. Or, if one studies the experienced qualities of stairs, one
realizes that narrow stairs typically relate to privacy and a faster ascent,
whereas wide stairs often relate to publicness, ceremony, and a slower
pace. Similarly, steep stairs express struggle and strength, isolation and
survival--experienced qualities that frequently lead to steep stairs' use as a
sacred symbol, as in Mayan temples or Rome's Scala Santa. On the other
hand, shallow stairs encourage a calm, comfortable pace and typically
involve secular use, as, for example, Michelangelo's steps leading up to
the Campidoglio of Rome's Capitoline Hill (ibid., 89-103).
Everyone loves window seats, bay windows, and big windows with
low sills and comfortable chairs drawn up to them....Therefore, in
every room where you spend any length of time during the day,
make at least one window into a "window place" (Alexander 1977,
p. 834, p. 837).
NOTE
1. Thiis-Evensen's book is a rewritten version of his 1982 doctoral
dissertation done under the direction of Norwegian architect and
architectural theorist Christian Norberg-Schulz, one of the major figures in
developing a phenomenology of architecture and environment. Though
not discussed here, Norberg-Schulz's work also draws centrally on
Heidegger’s thinking and is another major contribution to grounding
Heidegger’s notion of dwelling practically. See Norberg-Schulz, 1971,
1980, 1985, 1988.
REFERENCES
Alexander, C., 1987. A New Theory of Urban Design. New York:
Oxford University Press.
Alexander, C., 1993. A Foreshadowing of 21st Century Art: The Color
and Geometry of Very Early Turkish Carpets. NY: Oxford
University Press.
Alexander, C., Ishikawa, S., & Silverstein, M. 1977. A Pattern
Language. New York: Oxford University Press.
Chaffin, V. F. 1989. Dwelling and Rhythm: The Isle Brevelle as a
Landscape of Home. Landscape Journal, 7: 96-106.
Coates, G. J., and Seamon, D., 1993. Promoting a Foundational Ecology
Practically Through Christopher Alexander’s Pattern Language: The
Example of Meadowcreek. In D. Seamon, ed., Dwelling, Seeing,
and Designing. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, pp. 331-54.
Dovey, K. l985. Home and homelessness. In I. Altman & C. M. Werner
eds., Home Environments. New York: Plenum, pp. 33-64.
Foltz, B. V., 1995. Inhabiting the Earth: Heidegger, Environmental
Ethics, and the Metaphysics of Nature. Atlantic Highlands, NJ:
Humanities Press.
Harries, K. 1983. Thoughts on a Non‑Arbitrary Architecture. Perspecta,
20, 9‑20; reprinted in Dwelling, Seeing, and Designing, D. Seamon,
ed. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, pp. 41-59.
Heidegger, Martin, 1971. Poetry, Language, Thought. New York: Harper
and
Row.
Jager, Bernd, 1983. Theorizing and the Elaboration of Place: Inquiry into
Galileo and Freud, in A. Giorgi, A. Barton, and C. Maes, eds.,
Duquesne Studies in Phenomenological Psychology, vol. 4.
Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, pp. 153‑180.
Mugerauer, R. 1993. Toward an Architectural Vocabulary: The Porch as
a Between. In D. Seamon, ed., Dwelling, Seeing, and Designing.
Albany, NY: SUNY Press, pp. 103-28.
Mugerauer, R., 1994. Interpretations on Behalf of Place. Albany, NY:
SUNY Press.
Norberg-Schulz, C. 1971. Existence, Space, and Architecture. New York:
Praeger.
Norberg‑Schulz, C. 1980. Genius Loci: Toward a Phenomenology of
Architecture. New York: Rizzoli.
Norberg‑Schulz, C. 1985. The Concept of Dwelling: On the Way to a
Figurative Architecture. New York: Rizzoli.
Norberg-Schulz, C. 1988. Architecture: Meaning and Place. New
York: Rizzoli.
Relph, E., 1976. Place and Placelessness. London: Pion.
Seamon, D., 1979. A Geography of the Lifeworld. New York:
St. Martin's.
Seamon, D., 1982. The Phenomenological Contribution to Environmental
Psychology. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 2, 119‑140.
Seamon, D., l987. Phenomenology and Environment‑behavior Research.
In G. T. Moore and E. Zube (Eds.), Advances in Environment,
Behavior and Design, vol. l. New York: Plenum, pp. 3-27.
Seamon, D., 1989. Humanistic and Phenomenological Advances in
Environmental Design. The Humanistic Psychologist 17 (Autumn),
280-293.
Seamon, D., 1991. Awareness and Reunion: A Phenomenology of the
Person-Environment Relationship as Portrayed in the New York
Photographs of André Kertész, in Place Images in the Media, L.
Zonn (ed.). Totowa, New Jersey: Roman and Littlefield, pp. 87-
107.
Seamon, D., ed., 1993. Dwelling, Seeing and Building: Toward a
Phenomenological Ecology. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Seamon, D. & Mugerauer, R., eds., 1985. Dwelling, Place and
Environment: Towards a Phenomenology of Person and World.
New York: Columbia University Press.
Silverstein, M., 1993. The First Roof: Interpreting a Spatial Pattern. In D.
Seamon, ed., Dwelling, Seeing, and Designing: Toward a
Phenomenological Ecology. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, pp. 77-101.
Thiis-Evensen, T., 1987. Archetypes in Architecture. Oslo: Norwegian
University Press.
Zimmerman, M. 1983. Toward a Heideggerian Ethos for Rational
Environmentalism. Environmental Ethics, 5, 99‑131.
Back to top