Architectural Philosophy

Architectural Philosophy
Author: Andrew Benjamin
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2000-01-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780485004151

Architectural Philosophy is the first book to outline a philosophical account of architecture and to establish the singularity of architectural practice and theory. This dazzling sequence of essays opens out the subject of architecture, touching on issues as wide ranging as the problem of memory and the dystopias of science fiction. Arguing for the indissolubility of form and function, Architectural Philosophy explores both the definition of the site and the possibility of alterity. The analysis of the nature of the present and the complex sructure of repetition allows for the possibility of judgement, a judgement that arises from a reworked politics of architecture.

Philosophy of Architecture

Philosophy of Architecture
Author: Christian Illies
Publisher: Cambridge Architectural Press
Total Pages: 161
Release: 2014
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9780993053009

This little handbook acts as a brief introduction to philosophical ideas and how they intersect with architecture: its reception and appreciation as well as its practice. It suggests that since design is the core human discipline, being the only activity that involves the imaginative conception of ideas, leading to artifacts that are realised as actual constructions in the world, architecture itself can be regarded as a way of overcoming philosophical tensions by suggesting practical possibilities, namely designs, that appear to bridge between rival theories and approaches.

Philosophy for Architects

Philosophy for Architects
Author: Branko Mitrovic
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2011-06-29
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1568989946

Philosophy for Architects is an engaging and easy-to-grasp introduction to philosophical questions ofinterest to students of architectural theory. Topics include Aristotle's theories of "visual imagination" and their relevance to digital design, the problem of optical correction as explored by Plato, Hegel's theory of zeitgeist, and Kant's examinations of space and aesthetics, among others. Focusing primarily on nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophy, it provides students with a wider perspective concerning philosophical problems that come up in contemporary architectural debates.

A Philosopher Looks at Architecture

A Philosopher Looks at Architecture
Author: Paul Guyer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2021-05-20
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1108909566

What should our buildings look like? Or is their usability more important than their appearance? Paul Guyer argues that the fundamental goals of architecture first identified by the Roman architect Marcus Pollio Vitruvius - good construction, functionality, and aesthetic appeal - have remained valid despite constant changes in human activities, building materials and technologies, as well as in artistic styles and cultures. Guyer discusses philosophers and architects throughout history, including Alberti, Kant, Ruskin, Wright, and Loos, and surveys the ways in which their ideas are brought to life in buildings across the world. He also considers the works and words of contemporary architects including Annabelle Selldorf, Herzog and de Meuron, and Steven Holl, and shows that - despite changing times and fashions - good architecture continues to be something worth striving for. This new series offers short and personal perspectives by expert thinkers on topics that we all encounter in our everyday lives.

Louis Kahn

Louis Kahn
Author: John Lobell
Publisher: The Monacelli Press, LLC
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2020-06-30
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1580935281

For everyone interested in the enduring appeal of Louis Kahn, this book demonstrates that a close look at how Kahn put his buildings together will reveal a deeply felt philosophy. Louis I. Kahn is one of the most influential and poetic architects of the twentieth century, a figure whose appeal extends beyond the realm of specialists. In this book, noted Kahn expert John Lobell explores how Kahn's focus on structure, respect for materials, clarity of program, and reverence for details come together to manifest an overall philosophy. Kahn's work clearly conveys a kind of "transcendent rootedness"--a rootedness in the fundamentals of architecture that also asks soaring questions about our experience of light and space, and even how we fit into the world. In Louis Kahn: Architecture as Philosophy, John Lobell seeks to reveal how Kahn's buildings speak to grand humanistic concerns. Through examinations of five of Kahn's great buildings--the Richards Medical Research Building in Philadelphia; the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla; the Phillips Exeter Academy Library in New Hampshire; the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth; and the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven--Lobell presents a clear but detailed look at how the way these buildings are put together presents Kahn's philosophy, including how Kahn wishes us to experience them. An architecture book that touches on topics that addresses the universal human interests of consciousness and creativity, Louis Kahn: Architecture as Philosophy helps us understand our place and the nature of well-being in the built environment.

Architecture from the Outside

Architecture from the Outside
Author: Elizabeth Grosz
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2001-06-22
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9780262265362

Essays at the intersection of philosophy and architecture explore how we understand and inhabit space. To be outside allows one a fresh perspective on the inside. In these essays, philosopher Elizabeth Grosz explores the ways in which two disciplines that are fundamentally outside each another—architecture and philosophy—can meet in a third space to interact free of their internal constraints. "Outside" also refers to those whose voices are not usually heard in architectural discourse but who inhabit its space—the destitute, the homeless, the sick, and the dying, as well as women and minorities. Grosz asks how we can understand space differently in order to structure and inhabit our living arrangements accordingly. Two themes run throughout the book: temporal flow and sexual specificity. Grosz argues that time, change, and emergence, traditionally viewed as outside the concerns of space, must become more integral to the processes of design and construction. She also argues against architecture's historical indifference to sexual specificity, asking what the existence of (at least) two sexes has to do with how we understand and experience space. Drawing on the work of such philosophers as Henri Bergson, Roger Caillois, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Luce Irigaray, and Jacques Lacan, Grosz raises abstract but nonformalistic questions about space, inhabitation, and building. All of the essays propose philosophical experiments to render space and building more mobile and dynamic.

Architecture Theory

Architecture Theory
Author: Andrew Ballantyne
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2005-03-01
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9780826464088

Architecture Theory is a comprehensive and groundbreaking one volume overview of, and introduction to, contemporary critical discourse in architecture. In bringing critical theory and Continental philosophy to bear upon architecture, it provides a solid framework for a fully up-to-date theory of architecture, one that reflects the latest developments and concerns. The book is divided into four sections—groundwork; constructing the "individual"; pluralities; instrumentality—each covering a core theme in contemporary architecture theory. In each section an introductory essay by Andrew Ballantyne provides valuable context, exposition, and analysis. This is followed by a selection of writings on architecture and other related cultural concerns from major contemporary thinkers, including Zvizvek, Irigaray, Lefebvre, Lyotard, Kristeva, Nancy, Virilio, Deleuze, and Negri.

Architecture, Philosophy, and the Pedagogy of Cinema

Architecture, Philosophy, and the Pedagogy of Cinema
Author: Nadir Lahiji
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2021-05-26
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1000392104

Philosophers on the art of cinema mainly remain silent about architecture. Discussing cinema as ‘mass art’, they tend to forget that architecture, before cinema, was the only existing ‘mass art’. In this work author Nadir Lahiji proposes that the philosophical understanding of the collective human sensorium in the apparatus of perception must once again find its true training ground in architecture. Building art puts the collective mass in the position of an ‘expert critic’ who identifies themselves with the technical apparatus of architecture. Only then can architecture regain its status as ‘mass art’ and, as the book contends, only then can it resume its function as the only ‘artform’ that is designed for the political pedagogy of masses, which originally belonged to it in the period of modernity before the invention of cinema.

A Philosophy of Chinese Architecture

A Philosophy of Chinese Architecture
Author: David Wang
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2016-12-08
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1317505670

A Philosophy of Chinese Architecture: Past, Present, Future examines the impact of Chinese philosophy on China’s historic structures, as well as on modern Chinese urban aesthetics and architectural forms. For architecture in China moving forward, author David Wang posits a theory, the New Virtualism, which links current trends in computational design with long-standing Chinese philosophical themes. The book also assesses twentieth-century Chinese architecture through the lenses of positivism, consciousness (phenomenology), and linguistics (structuralism and poststructuralism). Illustrated with over 70 black-and-white images, this book establishes philosophical baselines for assessing architectural developments in China, past, present and future.