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1 Introduction
Some years ago, I scraped together the courage to ask one of my mentors, the respected South African architect Professor Emeritus Bannie Britz (1936–2013), what architecture was all about. Later that day he replied: “Architecture must dignify the human condition”. His words have fascinated me ever since; what is the nature of this ‘condition’ and the extent to which works of architecture are able to ‘dignify’ it?
During the latter part of the previous century this line of questioning enjoyed the scrutiny of one of the most influential architectural thinkers of our times. In the work of the Norwegian architect, theorist and architectural historian Christian Norberg-Schulz (1926–2000), the way we live in the world and give a voice to, or dignify, places through building became the driving force behind a formidable theoretical edifice. His most influential theoretical works include Existence, Space & Architecture (1971), Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture (1980), The Concept of Dwelling: On the Way to Figurative Architecture (1985) and Architecture: Presence, Language, Place (2000). These books drew heavily on the work of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889–1976). So much so that Norberg-Schulz’s work is widely acknowledged as the most comprehensive architectural interpretation of Heideggarian phenomenology.
The writings of Martin Heidegger had a profound and multi-faceted influence on 20th century thinking. In contrast to the Cartesian division between subject and object, Heidegger formulated human existence as concerned participation in a concrete world of life. He called this intimate entanglement ‘being-in-the-world’. Us, the entangled ones, he called Dasein; the ones who are there/here.1
Architects rarely see themselves as philosophers, yet Heidegger had a marked influence on architectural thinking and practice. Arguably, the magnitude of his impact may in large part be attributed to the fact that architects were introduced to his philosophy by Norberg-Schulz. Inspired by Heidegger’s understanding of human existence as being-in-the-world, Norberg-Schulz formulated an approach to architecture he summarised as the “art of place” (2000b:221). The art of place defines architecture as ‘the making of meaningful place’, and constitutes one of the formative beacons of architectural phenomenology.2
Norberg-Schulz made Heidegger’s thinking architectural, but usually this appropriative approach presents some drawbacks. Mostly, architects lack the training and background needed to decipher the intricacies of philosophy. Heidegger may be quoted in academia, but rarely on a construction site. And yet, in Norberg-Schulz’s case one encounters an architectural thinker gifted enough to thoughtfully engage philosophy, a teacher shrewd enough to recognise the ideas that will assist architecture students in designing buildings and a writer able to plainly, succinctly and forcefully express these ideas in written form. In terms of exploring the way people build their lived spatiality as places, Norberg-Schulz’s contribution remains unequalled – in scope and insight, but also in terms of sheer architectural applicability.
Norberg-Schulz’s influence is undeniable, but the time is ripe to question his reading of Heidegger. That is the aim of this book: to interrogate and augment the theoretical contribution of Norberg-Schulz, by considering the cogency of his architectural interpretation of Heidegger’s philosophy. Importantly, this enquiry will not be conducted from without, searching for different theories of place, but from within the ‘dialogue’ between his own work and the writings of Heidegger. This implies being guided by Norberg-Schulz’s ultimate architectural goal, expressed in the closing pages of his last book, Architecture: Presence, Language, Place (PLP, 2000b), where he stated that the “art of place” – designated in Norwegian by the term stedskunst – had to become the “art of the experience of living” (livskunst) (2000b:356).3 In one sentence Norberg-Schulz revealed the latent trajectory of his entire theoretical contribution and finally made sense of one of his favourite everyday expressions. Beyond making meaningful places, architecture had to manifest the full significance of what people mean when they say that life “takes place” (1979b:6; 1984a:75; 2000b:27). If architecture could concretise this ‘taking place’, then it would be ‘true to life’ and facilitate ‘authentic dwelling’.4 It would become livskunst. What should dwellers demand from architecture, if it is to manifest the taking place of human life?
In The Ethical Function of Architecture (1997) the philosopher Karsten Harries (b. 1937) proposed that works of architecture need to safeguard human life against two fundamental trepidations: the “terror of space” and the “terror of time” (1997:226). In general terms, understanding architecture as livskunst aspires to safeguarding human life against these terrors by concretising our presence within a particular space and time.
Did Norberg-Schulz follow Heidegger in the way he addressed these terrors architecturally? Before answering this question, it is important to point out two caveats: first, few architects have ventured into the philosophically dense Heideggarian source material, instead trusting Norberg-Schulz’s reading. Much good has come of this. In contrast to the monotony of Internationalism, architects at last had ‘permission’ to dwell on the peculiarities of their own places. Second, it is important to recognise the autonomy of Norberg-Schulz as a thinker. He had his own architecture-driven intentions. Moreover, he did not see himself as a philosopher. However, the possibility of livskunst is so deeply embedded in Heidegger’s philosophy of being-in-the-world that one would expect profound connections and assume an overall correspondence. Yet, there is a fundamental discrepancy.
The most general assumption underpinning Norberg-Schulz’s approach is that life takes place between earth and sky, a predominantly spatial interaction. But in his book Being and Time (1927a), Heidegger suggested an equally fundamental fact characterising human ‘betweenness’: being between birth and death. Indeed, it is the temporal nature of existence which mediates human interaction within the Heideggarian fourfold5 composed of earth, sky, mortals and divine. No longer observers nor subjects, people participate as mortals. This is not meant to imply that Heidegger neglected the spatial dimension of existence. He later described the intertwined spatio-temporal nature of our lived situation as an “abiding expanse”, or “verweilende Weite” (1945:114/74 & Davis, 2010:xiv). Besides enquiring about the ‘expansiveness’ of spatiality, Heidegger tried to understand the ‘ecstatic’ nature of our lived temporal reality by referring to the ‘abiding’ way any human being ‘is’ being-in-the-world. His illuminating claim is that mortals live time as care.
Heidegger believed that “care” or “concern”, the two main facets housed in the German term Sorge, always already6 saturate the human being and constitute the “existential meaning” of its Being7 (1927a:41). Sorge recognises both the concerned nature of human existence and the fact that humans are the ones who ‘cultivate’ or ‘take care’ of things. Care, by describing the way a human being is “concerned about its very being” (1927a:12), engages with the ‘ground’ of what makes existence meaningful. For the being of care, space as always already lived as place and time is always already lived as care.
On first inspection, it may appear as if Norberg-Schulz neglected the concept of ‘time’ by focusing on the architectural implications of understanding ‘spatiality’ as ‘place’. However, a more comprehensive study shows that he fully acknowledged the influence of time (he was, after all, also a distinguished architectural historian); just not Heidegger’s account of human temporality.
Norberg-Schulz’s theory of place, deeply indebted to Heidegger’s thinking, offers a persuasive response to the ‘terror of space’, but in terms of the ‘terror of time’ he substituted the ecstatic temporality of Heideggarian care with a different understanding of time; an approach he inherited from the Swiss architecture historian and critic Sigfried Giedion (1888–1968). Giedion mentored Norberg-Schulz during his studies at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) between 1945 and 1949 and understood time as “continuity and change” (Giedion, 1941:859). The notion of continuity and change may have made it possible to describe the way the ‘spirit of the place’ endures amid change, and offered a potent antidote to the neglect of architectural history sanctioned by the Modern Movement, but it remains aloof to the rich lived temporal reality of Dasein’s concerned being-in-the-world. This is the principal shortcoming of stedskunst. Caring for our places is more important than ever, but Norberg-Schulz’s approach towards the ‘terror of time’ has crippled the architectural project of ‘making meaningful place’ as livskunst.
I believe that there is a way to overcome Norberg-Schulz’s one-sided reliance on continuity and change and once again breathe life into architectural place-making. Architecture, besides being the ‘art of place’, is also an ‘art of care’.8 Architects need to be mindful of time, instead of continuously trying to overcome or transcend it. This demands a certain measure of humility and restraint, but also calls for the most resolute dedication to unveiling the Moment of revelation; the moment when the unique living of a shared way of life finds affirmation in architectural making. As an art form finely attuned to such moments, care constitutes the poetic ‘measure-taking’9 which draws stedskunst and livskunst into contiguity. Architects could shy away from questioning Being and merely accept place and care as ‘that which is’. But if we want to build the richness of what is nearest to us, if we are to dignify being-in-the-world, then we have to engage equally with the space–place and time–care relationships, and on their own terms. Grafting the art of care into Norberg-Schulz’s art of place opens a new way towards understanding and appreciating architecture as livskunst.
1.1 Martin Heidegger and Christian Norberg-Schulz
Are the writings of Martin Heidegger still relevant? The German philosopher Günther Figal (b. 1949) described Heidegger’s colossal influence as follows: “Thousands of treatises have been and are being written about him; the conferences, seminars, and lectures on his philosophy are countless” (2009:2). In addition, the renowned American philosopher Robert Mugerauer proposed that Heidegger’s ideas are directly relevant to some of the most pressing contemporary challenges. Dilemmas as varied as the “existential problems of each individual person”, the potential confrontations facing the world in terms of “massive forced emigration-immigration and refugee displacement”, combined with the reliance on “technologies consuming and controlling life itself”, and even the ensuing threat of “ecological disasters on a global scale”, can all be considered in terms of his philosophy (2008:xv). Instead of waning, the significance and impact of Heidegger’s thought has endured and diversified.
Christian Norberg-Schulz produced one of the first, and arguably still the most influential ‘architectural translation’ of Heidegger’s philosophy. Mugerauer described Norberg-Schulz as “a very sensitive reader of Heidegger’s German” (2008:579), and the Greek architect Pavlos Lefas (b. 1955) adjudged his contribution to be one characterised by “rare insight” (2009:131). To these voices of approval, the Norwegian architect and academic Gro Lauvland added that his theoretical contribution is “both radical and even more important today than [when] it was written” (2009:38). Moreover, the veracity of Norberg-Schulz’s place-bound interpretation has recently been corroborated (indirectly) by the Australian philosopher Jeff Malpas (b. 1958), in his excellent study of the role of place in Heidegger’s philosophy entitled Heidegger’s Topology: Being, Place, World (2006)...
