Space, Place, and Ethos: Reflection on the Ethical Function of Architecture

Author(s): Karsten Harries

Source: Artibus et Historiae, Vol. 5, No. 9 (1984), pp. 159-165
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KARSTENHARRIES

Space, Place, and Ethos:

Reflection on the Ethical Function of Architecture

Fromthis the poem springs: that we live in a place When we speak of dwelling we think first of all of shelter.
That is not our own and, much more, not ourselves By protecting us against the weather and against strangers,
And hard it is in spite of blazoned days. shelter provides for dwelling. Not that dwelling can be ad-
(Wallace Stevens, Notes Towards a Supreme Fiction)
equately understood as a being sheltered; we may be shel-
tered and yet remain homeless and displaced. This may in-
deed be the way most of us live.
Poetry, Wallace Stevens suggests, has its origin in the re- Consider America's mobile homes. In the undeniable suc-
fusal of man's demand for a place that is his own or even cess of the mobile home industry- in 1973 48% of all new
himself by the alien world into which he has been cast. This houses in the United States were mobile homes, while 91%
suggestion, that it is homelessness which provokes man into of all homes costing less than 20,000 dollars fell into this
creation, applies with at least as much justification to archi- category - a guide to such homes finds proof that they offer
tecture. Architecture,too, is witness to the fact that we find what is demanded: (( basic shelter )) at modest cost 2. There
it hard to live in a place ((that is not our own and, much is a suggestion that what distinguishes the traditionalhouse
more, not ourselves )). It is a mistake to suggest, as Joseph are just frills, extras easily dispensed with. But what kind of
Rykwert does, that the Biblicaldescription of paradise is in- dwelling do such homes reduced to basic shelter invite? The
complete in that it has nothing to say about a house 1. In term ((mobile home )) gives a first answer. Even if, as a mat-
paradise man had his place and was at home, both physically ter of fact, mobile homes are difficult to move and rarely
and spiritually.In this bounded garden there was no need for moved, they are yet mobile. Like a tent, the mobile home
a house. Only the fall, which cast man out of paradise and stands in no essential relationship to the environment in
forced him to toil on cursed ground, brought with it the ne- which it happens to be located. We have a home that does
cessity of building.Humanwork now had to remedy the defi- not belong to a particularplace or region. Nor need this be
ciencies of nature and wrest from it a place that would allow seen as a defect: given an increasingly mobile populationthis
for a secure dwelling and make up for what had been lost. mobility may well be considered an attractive feature.
2 Judith and Bernard
Raab, Good Shelter. A Guide to Mobile,
1
Joseph Rykwert,On Adam's House in Paradise,New York:The Modular,and PrefabricatedHouses, IncludingDomes, New York:Qua-
Museumof ModernArt, 1972, p. 13. drangle,1975, p. 29.
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 More disturbingly,the cited guide adds to the advantage guished architecture. Consider Mies van der Rohe's Farns-
of mobility another: the owner of a mobile home has the worth House, an open space that appears suspended be-
possibility of becoming a member of an instant community. tween two horizontalfloating planes. Visually the house has
<<Many mobile home parks exist throughout the country. a mobility which is not altogether unlike that of a trailer.
Each park lot has the necessary utilities, and many of these There is no basement that could root it in the ground. With
parks offer a variety of recreational and service facilities its slender supports, the house looks as if some giant hand
which can be attractive bonuses. In addition,everyone living just happened to have gently set it down in this place. The
in a mobile home park lives in a mobile home, and some opposition of building and nature is asserted rather than
might find this reassuring) 3. Not only the relationshipof the overcome. The dwelling is removed from the earth that
home to the environment has become accidental, but also seems to pass almost untouched under it. A house that in
the relationshipof the individualto the community of which this sense leaves nature alone cannot belong to it; its loca-
he just happens to be a member. The instant community of tion cannot but be accidental. It is essentially mobile, no
accidental relationshipis, in a deeper sense, not a commun- matter how fixed in fact it may be.
ity at all. Once again it is not the example that matters here. What
If there is no essential relationship between the mobile matters is ratherthe fascination which this look of mobility,
home and its social and physical environment,there is simi- like the related look of invertibility,has exerted on so many
larly no essential relationshipbetween the mobile home and modern architects.
those who happen to live in it. Not only are all mobile homes Mobilityimplies rootlessness. Rootlessness easily leads to
<<similar in appearance>>and <<constructed pretty much in dreams of a dwelling more intimatelytied to the earth. Con-
the same manner>>,but, as the guide proudly proclaims, the sider Heidegger's description of an old farmhouse in the
individualis provided with a <<total living environment, fully Black Forest and of the kind of dwelling that shaped it.
furnished and decorated by the manufacturer.Even bath tow-
els of suitable pattern and color can be made part of the It placed the farm on the wind-sheltered mountain slope
looking south, among the meadows close to the spring. It
package > 4. To be sure, the customer is offered a choice of gave it the wide overhanging roof whose proper slope
different ( decor packages >>.Thus he may choose between a bears up under the burden of snow, and which, reaching
Spanish, an early American, or a contemporarylook. But the deep down, shields the chambers against the storms of
individualno longer needs to shape his environment;all he the long winter nights. It did not forget the altar corner
behind the community table; it made room for the hal-
needs to do is step into a total environment, designed for lowed places of childbed and << the tree of the dead >>-
him by some decorator.The relationshipbetween the person for that is what they call a coffin there: the Totenbaum-
and his home has become accidental. Perhaps this is a price and in this way it designed for the different generations
that has to be paid whenever a home is reduced to basic under one roof the character of their journey through
shelter or to a ((machine for living>>.That something is lost time 5.
in this reduction is suggested by the many attempts to make As Heidegger describes the farmhouse, it not only offers
mobile homes look more like real houses, e.g. by adding fake shelter, but it provides for dwelling by articulating man's
shutters or a pitched roof. A porch, patio, or garden may ethos, his place in an ongoing order that includes God, the
furtherhelp to bind the home to the environment and give it community, and nature. The farmhouse edifies - the world
roots. Such features cannot be dismissed as unnecessary or- still hints at the relationshipbetween buildingand ethics.
nament. They answer to a need for a sense of place that Is such building,which articulates an order which assigns
goes not only beyond the need for shelter, but also beyond to men and things their proper places, still possible to us?
any merely aesthetic interest. Must we not dismiss Heidegger's description of the Black
What matters here is not the particularexample. The phy- Forest farmhouse as a romanticallyanachronistic idealization
sical mobilityof the mobile home only expresses a character- that fails to do justice to the shape of our world? Or does
istically modern spiritualmobilitythat finds an early architec- this farmhouse have something to teach us which we are in
tural expression in the utopian designs of Ledoux- think of danger of losing sight of?
his spherical house - and which betrays itself equally in the The farmhouse speaks to us of a dwelling rooted in a par-
floating look of so much modern and so much more distin- ticular time and place. That our dwelling does not know this

5 Martin Heidegger, " BuildingDwelling Thinking", Poetry, Lan-

3 Ibid.,p. 27. tr. A Hofstadter,
guage, Thought, New York:Harperand Row,1971,
4 Ibid p. 39. p. 160.

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sense of place cannot be denied. Nor can we deny that there I do not want here to side with Heidegger or with Cox,
is something very moving about buildings that speak to us of with place or with open space, but only to call attention to
such a dwelling. What is not clear, however, is that this loss the ambivalence of the issue. I still remember how disturbed
must be deplored. Should it not ratherbe welcomed as a lib- I was, when I first came to the United States, by buildings
eration from what may be called the tyranny of place? A ten- which seemed not to belong to the landscape. Too many
dency to escape from the rule of place has always marked houses seemed not to belong. But inseparable from this un-
human existence. The story of the fall, a story of self- easiness was a sense of openness and excitement. I can well
assertion and displacement, gives paradigmaticexpression to imagine an American who, carrying with him memories of
this tendency. his hometown's magic mile and coming to one of the old ci-
If man has always tried to free himself from the tyranny ties of Europe, city-walls still enclosing and sheltering the
of place and to overcome distance, technology has provided houses within, the entire city still an organic whole, would
this effort with far more effective means. Consider the way find all this order terriblydepressing and confining.As Robert
modern means of communication have brought the distant Frost put it:
close; or the automobile and the possibilities of living and
working in widely scattered places which it has opened up. 'Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
This attack on distance has to be understood in its ambiva- That wants it down '.
lence. Certainly, it does bring with it a rootlessness that He was not speaking of city-walls, not even of walls of
threatens not only a loss of place, but also a loss of com- rooms or houses, but of a New Englandstone-wall - and it is
munity. The small closed community of the peasant has giv- hard to want that down. But the poem is of course not only
en way to the perhaps less intimate, but also much less re- or even primarilyabout such a wall:
strictive multi-dimensionalcommunity - or should we rather
speak of communities - in which we find ourselves partici- 'Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
pating. Such participationdepends on means of communica- That wants it down'. I could even say 'Elves' to him,
tion which help to liberatethe individualfrom the accident of But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
place. For Heidegger's Black Forest peasant the particular
Bringinga stone grasped firmlyby the top
place in which he happened to find himself tended to be- In each hand, like an old stone-savage being armed.
come a destiny from which he could not escape, limitingthe He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
possibilities available to him and his children in a way that Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
we would find intolerable. Today place no longer need be
destiny. And the more value is placed on freedom, the more What so many travellers from Europe have found and
likely we are to demand mobility, to insist that an emphasis continue to find liberating not only about America's land-
on place should yield to the recognition that freedom de- scape, but also about her so often chaotic cities is an open-
mands open space. As Addison pointed out, {{a spacious ness that seems to have left behind the darkness in which
horizon is an image of liberty)). SimilarlyFrankLloydWright Heidegger's Black Forest peasant must have moved. Even
attacked the solid wall, this remnant of the sheltering cave, the all too familiarjumble of supermarkets,hamburgerjoints,
in the name of spiritualmobility and democracy. In this con- flashing lights, crisscrossing highways, and cars provides
nection Charles Jencks calls attention to Harvey Cox's con- not only striking images of rootlessness, but also hints at
ception of the secular city 6. Cox sees in the movement from freedom. While we may find ourselves disturbedby the often
tribe to town, from town to technopolis, a liberating move- ruthless disregard of physical place, that disregard reflects
ment leading man towards full maturity7. Just as the death the fact that place and with it proximityand distance are less
of God can be taken as a sign of man's coming of age, so and less a determining factor of our life. And who could
can the shift from place to open space. While Heidegger in- simply deplore this? No longer does the accident of location
sists on sacred order and suggests that this dimension is re- decide what job we are going to take, who our friends are
quired if there is to be genuine dwelling, Cox welcomes the going to be, or where we are going to shop. Undoubtedly
loss of the sacred and with it the loss of place. Perhaps free-
dom demands the secularizationof space, just as it demands
the secularization of our being in the world in its entirety. 6 Charles Jencks, Modern Movements in Architecture, Garden
The spiritual mobility of so much modern architecture could City:Anchor,1973, pp.328-329.
then be defended as answering to the demands of freedom. 7 HarveyCox, TheSecular City,New York:Macmillan,1966.

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this has meant the breakdown of neighborhoods. Given the helps to show this. At this time the earth was thought to be
nature of modern life, the house or apartment may well be- at the center of the cosmos. To challenge the geocentric
come just another place where one happens to sleep, eat, world-view, Cusanus invites his readers to imagine someone
perhaps make love or raise a family, at any rate not a place on a ship, drifting in a large body of flowing water. Would
which allows for an integration of all the important human such a person, unable to see the shores, not think himself
functions. There is a sense in which we all live in mobile the unmoving center of the world? And are we not like this
homes. The modern world tends to scatter the individualinto man when, secure in our sense of place, we proclaim the
different activities and different locales. What matters are earth to be the center of the cosmos? But such security is
these activities. Such a life demands means of communica- false and rests on perspectival illusion. With equal right a
tion and transportationthat minimize the importance of dis- Martian might claim Mars to be that center, a lunarianthe
tance ratherthan a sense of place. This raises the question: moon 8. This reflection was to give others the courage to re-
Does such a life also demand the death of an architecture ject the geocentric world view. But Cusanus was not a fore-
that grants a sense of place? runnerof Copernicus;he did not place the sun in the center
It would be a mistake to see in this attack on distance of the cosmos. Instead he denied that it made any sense to
and the loss of place which must attend it only the result of speak of a center at all. Reflection reveals an infinite space
technological progress. That progress realizes a displacement which has neither center nor boundaries.Once again it is the
which is implicit in the commitment to objectivity which is freedom of thought that helps man to escape from the acci-
the foundation of our science and, dependent on it, of our dent of location and to break out of the prison of perspec-
technology and of the mastery that it has given us over na- tive. As that prison is shattered, so is the closed world of the
ture. This commitment has shaped the world we live in and Middle Ages. Unlike that world, which assigned to man and
our sense of reality. to all things their properplaces, the infinitespace of the mod-
Let me explain what I mean here by objectivity.Firstof all erns leaves man lost in space. Space conquers place. The
we find ourselves caught up in the world. The way we Copernican revolution transformed the world into a literally
experience the world is inseparably tied to the activities in mobile home. Nietzsche is right to speak of ((the nihilistic
which we are engaged. It is also subject to the point of view consequences of contemporary science... Since Copernicus
which is ours because of the place in which we happen to man has been rollingfrom the center toward X >>9.
be. Our experience of things is mediated by our body and There were those who, like Giordano Bruno, welcomed
thus subject to the accident of location. But the perspective this transformation as a liberation of the spirit. But soon
assigned to us by our location is not a prison. Not only can enthusiasm yielded to despair. The infinite space opened up
we move and thus gain different perspectives; in imagination by reflection filled man with terror.The accident of location
I can put myself in other places even without moving; and came to be experienced as an oppressive absurdity. Pascal,
we can go even further and demand descriptions that are Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Turgenev, Rilke,they all link nihil-
free from all perspectival distortion, i.e. objective. The de- ism and the modern conception of space. Bazarov's reflec-
scriptions of science are objective in this sense. Science can tion in Fathers and Sons is characteristic:((The tiny space
thus be shown to rest on a self-displacement: the thinking which I occupy is so infinitelysmall in comparison with the
self frees itself from the limitations imposed on man by the rest of space, in which I am not, and which has nothing to
body and the accident of its location. If that liberationis in- do with me; ...And in this atom, this mathematical point, the
itially a liberation only in thought and of thought, science blood is circulating, the brain is working and wanting
leads to technology; technology again provides means which something... Isn't it loathsome? Isn't it petty,10 Man exper-
allow us to carry that liberationinto the world and to devise iences himself adrift in the infinite, a stranger unable to find
instruments and machines that will further weaken the a place that is his own. And the more science and especially
power of distance and place. technology carry this attack on place into our everyday life,
The commitment to objectivity must transform our sense the more we can expect that life to be tinged with a sense of
of space and lead to a sense of homelessness. A thought ex- being underway, on the road, of not really belonging any-
periment by the fifteenth century cardinal Nicolaus Cusanus where.

9 FriedrichNietzsche, The Will to Power, tr. W. Kaufmannand

8 Cf. KarstenHarries,"The InfiniteSphere:Commentson the R.J. Hollingdale,New York:Vintage, 1968, Number1.
Historyof a Metaphor",Journalof the Historyof Philosophy,vol. XIII, 10 Ivan S. Turgenev, Fathers and Sons, tr. Constance Garnett,
January,1975, Number1, pp. 5-15. New York:ModernLibrary,1950, pp. 148-149.

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 The dread of boundless space generates the need for piece of sculpture such absolute architectureasserts its self-
boundaries. From the very beginning building had aimed at sufficient presence. Part of this assertion is a disregardof the
more than just physical control of the environment; it had setting which has to give such architecture a look of mobil-
sought to establish spiritual control. Given purely pragmatic ity. This look becomes unavoidable to the extent that the
considerations there often was no need for the kind of order purityand autonomy for which the other arts have long been
on which builders have insisted. This is the point of Le Cor- striving is also claimed for architecture. An autonomous
busier's tale of the buildingof the primitivehome: ((Primitive work of art can only stand in an accidental relationshipto its
man has halted his chariot:he has decided that here shall be environment. As already suggested, there is a deep affinity
his home ground. He chooses a clearing and cuts down the between the look of mobilityof so much modern architecture
trees that crowd it in; he levels the ground about it; he and the physical mobility of the mobile home. This affinity
makes a path to the stream or to the settlement of his fellow has its deepest source in the acceptance of the priority of
tribesmen which he has just left... This path is as straight as the thinkingsubject and with it of objective space. If technol-
his tools, his hands, and his time will let him make it. The ogy rests on such acceptance, so does Hollein'sabsolute ar-
pegs of his tent describe a square, hexagon, or octagon; the chitecture. But in that space we can find no home. One place
palisade (of the settlement) forms a rectangle whose four is as good as another. The artist may cast his structures into
sides are equal...)) 11. Geometry appears here as a peculiarly this void, but his heroicallydefiant gestures cannot transform
human creation. By imposing a geometric order on his envi- space into place. If architecture is to restore to us our sense
ronment man humanizes it, appropriates it. Le Corbusier's of place it has to break with both functionalism and forma-
primitive builder gives his measure to the environment and lism. A presupposition of this is the recovery of a sense of
thus makes it his own. place.
Le Corbusier'stale places man in opposition to the world But is the demand for a restoration of man's sense of
around him. Wilhelm Worringer'sthesis that geometric ab- place not a demand for something which is not only undesir-
straction is born of a sense of homelessness comes to mind. able, but impossible - undesirable because it glorifies the
Presupposed is the fundamental homelessness of man. If he mystery of belonging to a place at the expense of freedom,
is to find a home, he will have to fashion it himself. Le Cor- impossible because it asks us to take a step back to a pre-
busier sees primitive man engaged in an attempt to over- Copernicanunderstandingof the world?
power what surrounds him. But must or should buildingand An answer to the first objection is implicit in the recogni-
dwelling be tied to such an aggressive stance? Is homeless- tion that man's being cannot be reduced to the thinking sub-
ness the fundamental condition of man, or is Bachelardright ject or a disembodied freedom. Man is body, not spirit hap-
to insist on an even more fundamental sense of being at pening to have a body. This is not to deny that in reflection
home? and imagination he also trascends himself as body. Man be-
What can, however, not be denied is that a sense of longs to both, to the body and to the spirit, to the earth and
homelessness is inseparable from our spiritualsituation. The to the light. An adequate conception of dwelling must do jus-
displacement implicit in the modern understandingof space tice to this twofold belonging which is never without tension.
has given new urgency to the ancient demand for an archi- Such tension may be found intolerable and lead to at-
tecture that will not only provide shelter, but will allow us to tempts to negate it. Two ways of negation offer themselves.
recover our sense of place. We have to agree with Hans Hol- Man may try to assert himself as free spirit and attempt to
lein when he suggests that the need to build is not first of all reduce body and nature to mere material to be understood
a need for protective roofs, but for a mastery of space. and controlled. Such assertion must demand open space as
(( Form does not follow function. Form does not arise out of the only environment that can do justice to a genuinely hu-
its own accord. It is the great decision of man to make a man dwelling. Should the spirit triumphover the earth, archi-
buildingas a cube, a pyramid,or sphere )) 12. The dread of the tecture would lose its point. For if man's real home is spiri-
infinite is banished by the imposition of geometric order. We tual, there is no reason to place too much emphasis on his
are reminded of Ledoux's utopian designs, but also of much material home. The accidental character of location must
recent architecture which relies on the aesthetic impact then not only be accepted, but welcomed. It is in such self-
made by simple geometric forms. Like a framed picture or a assertation that the look of mobility that is so characteristic
12 Walter
Pichler/Hans Hollein, "Absolute Architecture", Pro-
11Quoted in Joseph Rykwert, On Adam's House in Paradise, grams and Manifestoes on 20th CenturyArchitecture,ed. UlrichCon-
New York:The Museumof ModernArt, 1972, pp. 14-15. rads, tr. Michael Bullock,Cambridge:MIT,1971, p. 182.

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of our architecturalenvironment,has its deepest foundation. coming should thus not lead us to overlook the importance
One may, on the other hand, aware that such one-sided of leavetaking. But the inverse is also true:the importanceof
emphasis on the spirit must lead to nihilism,glorify an exis- leavetaking should not lead us to overlook the importanceof
tence that reduces man to no more than a part of nature and homecoming. The demands of both can be done justice to
idealize the person who has roots. But too strongly devel- only by an environmentthat is profoundlyambiguous, which
oped roots imply a lack of freedom and thus less than full knows both: permanence and change, the comforts of enclo-
humanity.We have to recognize the rights of both body and sure and the magic of the open. The poetry of windows and
spirit. Man's dwelling demands buildings which acknowledge doors has one source in this ambiguity.
both the sheltering power of place and the indefinitepromise Buildingseeks to transform space into place. Such trans-
of open space. Thus we have to resist ideals of dwelling formation would be impossible if man could not draw on a
which rest on a one-sided celebration of place. Heidegger's naturalsense of place, if, as Bachelardpoints out, our sense
Black Forest farmhouse not only lies behind us, but it lies be- of being an outcast, of being lost in space, were not matched
hind us as a reminder of a darker mode of existence. We by memories or dreams of being at home. We are haunted
may like to visit such a farmhouse; it can awaken dreams by an archetypal house that endows every new house we
which can help us to re-establish the tension between body move into with an aura of hopeful expectation. Bachelard
and spirit that is threatened by that rootlessness which is thus claims that ((there exists for each one of us an oneiric
inseparablefrom modernity.But most of us know better than house, a house of dream-memory,that is lost in the shadow
to try to realize such dreams. Equallydeficient is a dwelling of a beyond of the real past )) 14.But it is not only this chang-
which is so given to mobilitythat it is no longer burdenedby ing mixture of personal dreams and memories that can give
dreams of homecoming. We all need such dreams, if only as content to the archetype of the house. Often it was the past
dreams. The houses in which we live should only evoke or that gave direction to buildingby making this archetype con-
hint at, but never become that home which would allow us crete. In a particularperiod - most often it was antiquity
to be truly at home. As Bachelardknew, such a home would which was so idealized- man sought to recover a glimpse of
mean death 13. Genuine dwelling is a continuous home- the lost paradise.
coming. A different yet related kind of model is suggested by the
But that cannot be quite right. Is that conception of analogy between this conception of buildingas a transforma-
dwelling not one which suits the older person more than the tion of space into place and the traditionalunderstandingof
adolescent or the young adult who in an importantsense has divine creation which transforms chaos into cosmos. God is
to leave home in order to become himself? There would be thus frequently described as the archetypal architect, the
something very sad about a twenty-year-old dreaming about cosmos as man's originalhome. In the history of architecture
building the house in which he will spend the rest of his we meet again and again with an understandingof building
years. For the child, on the other hand, the stability and the as a repetitionof the cosmogonic act which seeks to recover
reliabilityof the house has an importance that it no longer an originalsense of being-at-home.
has for the adolescent. My family moved a great deal when I But what does all this rhetoric still mean to us? This
was young. Perhaps to make up for this I had a great attach- brings me to my second question: is such a sense of place
ment to certain objects. I remember especially a vase with a not denied to us by the post-Copernicanworld in which we
peculiarglaze, which offered stability in a too rapidlychang- find ourselves? Does our understandingof space still permit
ing world. The rage which I felt when my sister accidentally a sense of place? But do we in fact live in a post-Copernican
broke it was very much like the rage my son felt when a re- world? The space of our experience is not at all the homo-
cent storm took down a ratherugly ivy-covered wrought iron geneous objective space opened up by reflection which
gate in front of our house. Once one has gotten older it be- makes quantitative measure the key to distance. Imagine a
comes difficult to feel such rage. More and more the house bedroom and yourself, lying in the bed placed against the
becomes a place to leave. And this is as it should be. There outside wall. And as you lie in the bed you start thinkingthat
was something profoundlycorrect about the old rules which this brick wall is only a few inches thick, you think of the
allowed the apprentice to learn his craft in the town of his rosebush without, with its prickly vines and dark flowers,
birth, but forced the journeymanto leave that town, to travel only a few inches away from where you are, very close and
before returninghome as master. The importance of home- yet in another sense quite distant. Such thoughts may
13 Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, (tr. Maria Jolas),
14
Boston:Beacon,1969, p. 61. Ibid.,p. 15.

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strengthen your sense of the room as your own. Everything Wright greeted the possibilties opened up by glass recalls
in the room is close to you as the rosebush is not. And the the enthusiasm with which Giordano Bruno greeted the de-
more you focus on its objective proximity,the more uncanny struction of the medieval cosmos. There is indeed something
it becomes in its invisible presence. The normallysheltering intoxicating about the way glass can open an interiorto the
wall seems to give way. A sense of homelessness awakens outside. Yet who would want to live in a glass house? Given
which is not without its own promise and excitement. a plot of land large enough to offer privacy the glass house
Our experience of space is essentially regional. In this may have its attractions. But imagine living in a city of glass.
case the region is a room. But we cannot restrict regions to Soon we would desperately look for some hole of our own,
what man has built. A forest clearing can be experienced as offering protection from the world and from others.
a region, or a valley. Regions are nested within regions 5. If there is something inhuman about the openness of
Thus the world can be experienced as the region in which all glass architecture, buildings which give us no sense of out-
other regions have their place. As such it is represented by a side are equally disturbing.Thus in the film Last Yearat Ma-
medieval mappa mundi that projects the world on to the body rienbad an oppressive architecturalenvironment was created
of Christ and places Jerusalem at the center. Measured by simply by showing the baroque interiors in which the film
what we use maps for, such a map is sadly deficient. It is of was shot in such a way that we never see a window. The
little help to someone who wants to travel from one town to normally festive spaces assume a labyrinthine, prison-like
another. On the other hand, our maps are of no use at all to quality.
someone who wants to learn man's place in the order of Not only past architecture, but paintings, poems, novels,
things. The medieval map represents the world as a region fairytales, all offer rich material for an exploration of the na-
that assigns man his place, his ethos. In this sense it can be tural language of place and space. That language must be
said to have an ethical function. understood if architecture is to reclaim its ethical function.
Region grants place. Place cannot be reduced to spatial What stands in the way of such understanding is an in-
location, just as a region is understood only superficially terpretation of reality that has made objective reason the
when we have defined its boundaries. Thus we do not ex- measure of what is real. Such an interpretationhas to reduce
plain what a kitchen is by pointing out that it is bounded by architecture to an instrumental function. Buildings have to
floor, ceiling, and walls. To understand the kitchen as a re- become machines, perhaps with frills or decorations added.
gion we have to understand also the activities which go on Unable to heed the demands of dwelling an architecturethat
in it. Region and activity are closely linked. It is in terms of is unwilling to surrender its claim to being an art must lead
activity that we usually understand proximity,distance, and an uneasy life, torn between functional and aesthetic consi-
place. Activity again cannot be separated from the body. The derations, between the 6cole polytechnique and the 6cole des
body thus offers us something like a natural measure of beaux arts. In a profoundsense all its creations will be decor-
space. ated sheds. But decorationcan only cover up the underlying
If architecture establishes boundaries in space and thus cynicism, the nihilism that is inseparable from objective rea-
transforms space into place, space should not be understood son.
as a neutral given. Before the architect goes to work, space But is objective reason the sole measure of what is real?
has already been separated into regions of which sky and Or, to put the matter differently,do we have to consider our
earth are the most important.This regional space is already physical environment as materialto be manipulatedand con-
charged with meaning and hints at man's ethos. Up and trolled? Can we consider it rather as something which does
down, right and left, front and back, center and periphery, not so much belong to us as we belong to it and place archi-
vertical and horizontal,inside and outside speak a very differ- tecture in the service of that sense of belonging? There still
ent and often ambiguous language. remains that naturallanguage of time and place, of going up
Inside, for example, can be both prison and shelter; out- and down, of light and dark, of openness and shelter which
side can be both a threatening other and a promise of libera- grants man his ethos. To open ourselves to that language is
tion. The fascination with glass architecture betrays a long- to gain that vision which genuine building, that is building
ing for openness that tends to see all enclosure as a prison. which provides for genuine dwelling, both articulates and
The enthusiasm with which Paul Scheerbart or Frank Lloyd preserves.

Cf. MartinHeidegger,Sein und Zeit, 7th ed., Thbingen:Nie-

15

meyer,1953, pp. 104-113.

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