Immanuel KANT
Critique of Pure Reason
1781
Announced that absolute and spiritual truth could be achieved by studying personal experience.
Both, Hegel and Husserl, are therefore direct answers to Immanuel Kants division of objects
Husserls approach was to the study of the essence of consciousness through the subjective experience of phenomena.
Edmund Husserl
Phenomenology
1901 - 17
"A new fundamental science, pure phenomenology, has developed within philosophy: This is a science of a thoroughly new type and endless scope. It is inferior in
methodological rigor to none of the modern sciences. All philosophical disciplines are rooted in pure phenomenology, through whose development, and through it alone,
they obtain their proper force. Philosophy is possible as a rigorous science at all
only through pure phenomenology"
Husserl therefore sought out to apply scientific method to the study of the acquisition of conscious experiences.
Husserl, Edmund. Inaugural Lecture at Freiburg im Breisgau. 1917
expanded the reach of phenomenology by including semiconscious and even unconscious mental activities related to practical and internalized
activities, such as speaking, hammering a nail or dwelling.
Martn HEIDEGGER
Being and Time
1927
His approach was more poetic than that of Husserl, as he questioned the abilities of technology and scientific theories to find absolute truth. He favored a personal study of
experience by means of psychoanalysis as a means to a deep understanding of being.
By applying these principles to architecture, Heidegger established a link between phenomenology and architecture that has influenced many architects and theorists up until today.
That we experience architecture with all our senses, and that this experience is ongoing, dynamic and culturally dependent seems logical. The
ability to design buildings by reverse engineering
experiences or obtaining through personal intuition the fundamental needs of the future building are the precepts of phenomenology in
architecture. Japanese author Junichir Tanizakis, In Praise of Shadows is a great example of how different cultural backgrounds greatly
effect experiences of architectural space.
Other literary works have also successfully defined the personal experiences of space and context, yet can we know if an architect is truly able
to reverse the process to create contextually correct experiences for other people, or might they be merely the projection of his
self-interest onto everybody else ?
http://www.abiboo.com/arch/quick-tour-through-phenomenological-thiturequick-tour-through-phenomenological-thinking-in-architecture
Maurice MERLEAU-PONTY
Phenomenology of Perception
1945
Gaston BACHELARD
The Poetics of Space
1958
Christian NORBERG-SCHULZ
Genius Loci: Towards a
Phenomenology of
Architecture
1980
Juhani PALLASMA
The Eyes of the Skin:
Architecture and the Senses
1995
Alvar Aalto
Louis Kahn
Instead of participating in the process of further speeding up the experience of the world,
architecture has to slow down experience, halt time, and defend the natural slowness and
diversity of experience. Architecture must defend us against excessive exposure, noise and
communication.
Fairs, Marcus. Interview with Rem Koolhaas. In Icon Magazine, Essex Media 10 Limited. Issue 13 June 2004.
Any architectural project we do takes at least four or five years, so increasingly there is a
discrepancy between the acceleration of culture and the continuing slowness of
architecture.
Pallasmaa, Juhani. The Embodied Image: Imagination and Imagery in Architecture. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2011.
p. 119.
Both architects use similar methods, such as abstract models, and attempt to make buildings that are meaningful for their inhabitants, yet their opinions differ at the
necessary speed, a seemingly permanent debate in architecture, art, and science.
Thinking and designing Architecture through the eyes of Phenomenology requires to embrace the fact that designing a building is a process too complex to be
simplified or made only from rationalization (left side of the brain), yet not so complex that an individual may not capture the essence through intuition and the study of
an unconscious collective knowledge (right side of the brain).
http://www.abiboo.com/arch/quick-tour-through-phenomenological-thiturequick-tour-through-phenomenological-thinking-in-architecture