Architecture creates spaces and modifies places for dwelling.
That is my definition of architecture: a discipline primarily concerned with space, place, and dwelling, which is its ultimate scope. A discipline in-between the ideal (or mental) and the physical (or corporeal), the abstract and the concrete. Spaces, which are ideal and abstract entities, can be created by the imaginative power of the architect; conversely, places – which preexist and outlast human presence and activities – can only be modified. Dwelling, in the most general and existential sense of the term, is the way beings stay in this world: a matter of implaced existence.[1]
The concept of place — in the broadest sense that I’m arguing for at RSaP — surpasses the traditional geographical and sociocultural dimensions, including physicochemical, biological (hence, ecological), and intellectual or symbolic dimensions. Within this overarching compass of place, which comprises space as a symbolic dimension, nothing is left out: reality is place. Therefore, if architecture aims at being sensitive to places, lands or territories, it cannot avoid direct and conscious confrontation with all the processes and forces that are constitutive of reality as place (see On the Structure of Reality). This is a new realism for architecture, at the beginning of a new epoch for mankind — the Anthropocene.
Note
[1] According to this view, any building — such as a house, a school, a church, a museum, a theatre, an airport, etc. — or location — a mountain, a desert, a forest, an urban street, etc. — affords a modality of dwelling. Fundamentally, it is a Heideggerian position that I wish to extend by including all living and non-living systems within reach of architects’ attention: in fact, our understanding of dwelling at the epoch of the Anthropocene cannot be limited to human beings and dwelling, given that architects when creating new spaces for human purposes and dwelling also modify the existing places inevitably changing the dwelling conditions of all that already existed in such places, i.e., things and living beings—fauna and flora together with humans. This fact suggests a need for different ethics and the development of transdisciplinary strategies in design professions to address the human impact on Earth’s climatic and environmental systems (i.e., ecological systems) holistically.
Image Credits
Featured Image, by Alessandro Calvi Rollino, CC BY-NC-SA: Main Façade of the School of Architecture, Politecnico di Milano, IT – the place where I got my degree – designed by the Italian architect Vittoriano Viganò, 1970-1983.
