This thesis considers the absence of critical thinking, to use Arendt’s expression, thoughtlessness, which is a problem of our time, as architecture-specific problem, which has led to many discussions of architecture and treatments of architectural conditions being caught up in a so-called stultifying logic, leading directly to the view that architecture is practised in a context of utter dependence on external forces. This work is a call for architectural practice that involves reflection on one’s own action, an exploration of the possibilities, complexities and variability of the very conditions of architecture, a venture that is embarked here as well. Based on a theoretical structure that includes works of architectural theory, philosophy and philosophy of architecture, it theoretically discusses and develops architecture as
an autonomous, emancipatory practice that persistently and actively occupies and intervenes in cultural space. A practice that does not subscribe to the notion that
architecture is practised in a context of total dependence, because it makes its own laws, within any given set of conditions. The central thesis of this paper is
that in order to continue such a practice of architecture, it is necessary to reject the so-called false dilemmas that architecture, and with it we as architects, are repeatedly confronted with. It points to three such dilemmas. They are false because they obscure the right questions of (contemporary) architecture. These are the questions that allow architecture to distance itself from its total immersion in and determination by the world as it is. The thesis elaborates on these issues by focusing on three selected conditions or dimensions of architectural design. These conditions are: the user, the utility-aesthetics pair and the context. Based on an analysis of these three conditions or dimensions, the thesis outlines (some of)
the relevant questions of/for architecture, that is, the questions that open up the possibility for its continuation as a practice that is and operates in the world such that it determines itself, that it sets its own orientation, and only as such can build a truly human world.
|