In 1982 renowned architects and theorists Christopher Alexander and Peter Eisenman met at Harvard University — Graduate School of Design — to debate on the concept of harmony in architecture: ‘Contrasting Concepts of Harmony in Architecture’ was the argument of that witty, biting, and ironic debate, which was originally published in the magazine Lotus International n° 40 (1983), and later…
I return to one of the arguments that interested me the most since I entered the spatial debate: the realism of space. This question inevitably connects to the spatial language we use to describe phenomena between concrete and abstract aspects of reality. But, most of all — I will especially argue in the final part of the text — this…
Take a mountain: is it a thing or a place? It is an elemental thing-place. The mountain looms before us as a massive place for things and as itself a thing. It looms as a Thing of things [i.e., a compound body], just as stones and lichen on stones are in turn things of this Thing. Furthermore, just as suchdeterminate…
In the introductory note to PART IV – PROLEGOMENA TO A NEW CONCEPT OF NATURE of the book The Nature of Physical Existence (1972), the American author, philosopher Ivor Leclerc, remarks on the reason why he developed such an articulated exploration into the conception of nature, i.e., the physical existent (from the Greek term ‘physis’, φύσις), between historical, linguistic, metaphysical…
I argue we cannot understand the meaning of the concepts of place and space, and their impact on our understanding of the nature of reality, without considering the meaning of other basic concepts that are co-implicated with and necessary for understanding the very concepts of place and space. That was particularly evident ever since I introduced Julian Barbour’s scientific history…