Interpretation in Architecture: Design as Way of Thinking 0415384486, 9780415384483

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Interpretation in Architecture

Interpretation is everywhere in architecture. It is the basis of architectural creation. The introduction of the computer into the design studio revived expectations of a more scientific approach to architectural design. In many respects the contemporary studio climate is similar to that in which eighteenthand nineteenth-century humanists defended interpretation as the mode of reasoning in the humanities and social sciences against method and an overt scientific rationalism. This collection of essays, by Adrian Snodgrass and Richard Coyne, captures the reflective experience of teachers in the architectural design studio in order to demonstrate that interpretation still remains the core of architectural production and hence of architectural understanding. Focusing on three interpretive themes – play, edification and otherness – the anthology draws together strands of thought informed by the diverse reflections of hermeneutical scholarship, the applications of digital media and studio teaching and practice. The book provides an exciting synthesis of the findings of two scholars from disparate areas of architectural research, united by a common concern with cultural production. Adrian Snodgrass is an internationally renowned authority in Buddhist Studies, Buddhist art and Asian architecture. He is an Honorary Research Associate with the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Sydney and Adjunct Professor in the Centre for Cultural Research at the University of Western Sydney. He also researches in the area of hermeneutical philosophy and its application to knowledge production and cross-cultural understanding. He is an editor of Architectural Theory Review and his books on Buddhism and architectural symbolism have become classics in the field. Richard Coyne researches and teaches in digital media, computer-aided design in architecture, and design theory. He inaugurated an innovative cross-disciplinary MSc in Design and Digital Media. He is author of three books with MIT Press on the implications of computers for design. He is an architect and was recently Head of the University of Edinburgh’s Department of Architecture, and is Director of the School of Arts, Culture and Environment’s Graduate School.

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Interpretation in Architecture Design as a way of thinking

Adrian Snodgrass and Richard Coyne

Routledge Taylor & Francis Group

LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 2006 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Taylor & Francis Inc 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

© 2006 Adrian Snodgrass and Richard Coyne

Typeset in Univers and montages designed by Alex Lazarou, Surbiton, Surrey, UK Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Every effort has been made to ensure that the advice and information in this book is true and accurate at the time of going to press. However, neither the publisher nor the authors can accept any legal responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions that may be made. In the case of drug administration, any medical procedure or the use of technical equipment mentioned within this book, you are strongly advised to consult the manufacturer's guidelines.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested

ISBN10 0-415-38448-6

ISBN13 9-780-415-38448-3 (Hbk)

ISBN10 0-415-38449-4

ISBN13 9-780-415-38449-0 (Pbk)

To the memory of R.N. (Peter) Johnson

Contents

Illustration credits

ix

Preface

xi

Introduction: Architecture and coherence

1

Part 1 Play

23

1

Architectural hermeneutics

27

2

Playing by the rules

57

3

Creativity as commonplace

69

Part 2 Edification

83

4

The disintegrated curriculum

87

5

Ethics and practice

109

6

Design assessment

117

7

Design amnesia

131

Part 3 Otherness

147

8

The fusion of horizons

151

9

A world of difference

165

10 Myth, mandala and metaphor

181

11 Translating tradition

203

12 Thinking through the gap

221

13 Random thoughts on the Way

241

Coda: Architecture as interpretation

255

vii

Contents

viii

Notes

259

Bibliography

305

Index

325

Illustration credits

The authors and the publisher would like to thank the following individuals and institutions for giving permission to reproduce illustrations. We have made every effort to contact copyright holders, but if any errors have been made we would be happy to correct them at a later printing. Except where indicated, photographs and drawings are by the authors. Chapter 9 A world of difference Figure 3. Courtesy Stephen Cairns Chapter 10 Myth, mandala and metaphor Figure 1. Schematic plan of Borobudur, derived from various sources, including: Rowland, B., The Art and Architecture of India: Buddhist, Hindu,

Jain, Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1971; Jellicoe, G. and S. Jellicoe, The Landscape of Man: Shaping the Environment from Prehistory to the Present Day, London: Thames and Hudson, 1975 Figure 3. Courtesy Stephen Cairns Figure 4. Courtesy Stephen Cairns Figure 5. Courtesy Stephen Cairns Figure 6. Courtesy Stephen Cairns Chapter 11 Translating tradition Figure 2. Courtesy School of Arts, Culture and Environment image collection

ix

Preface

Interpretation is everywhere in architecture. This is obvious in the case of architecture as an object of critique, but interpretation is evident in the very act of architectural creation. This book captures the reflective experience of two scholars in the architectural design studio, who take interpretation as the core of architectural production and hence of architectural understanding. The introduction of the computer into the design studio revived expectations of a more scientific approach to architectural design. This revival in design methods has been largely eclipsed by a more ludic approach to method, 1

as an ironical tool or plaything, a theme we have developed at length elsewhere.

But in many respects the studio climate is similar to that in which eighteenth- and nineteenth-century humanists defended interpretation as the mode of reasoning in the humanities and social sciences. We argue that the studio has to assert its position as a site of creation, learning and understanding, in ways other than playing for or against science, or as the site of inscrutable genius. This book is structured around three interpretive themes: play, edification and otherness. The interpreter/designer is not so much an agent as a subject played by circumstance and language. Interpretation reflects back on the interpreter in a process of edification, or education. Effective interpretation draws on encounters with the other and the unfamiliar, particularly as designers examine history, unfamiliar traditions and alien architectures. The book weaves together strands of thought informed by the diverse reflections of hermeneutical scholarship, insights from Indian and Japanese systems of thought, the uses of digital media, and extensive studio teaching and practice. The work outlined here has been developed over a number of years and is the product of various collaborations, especially with staff and students at the Universities of Edinburgh and Sydney. We name just a few individuals here who have provided stimulus and feedback for this project: Samer Akkach, Aart Bijl, Stephen Cairns, Bruce Currey, Mark Dorrian, Tony Fry, Adrian Hawker, Simon Hayman, Glen Hill, Yahya Islami, Ray Ison, Leonidas Koutsoumpos, John Lansdown, Stephen Loo, David Martin, Fiona McLachlan, Sally McLaughlin, Dermott McMeel, Drasko Mitrikeski, Sidney Newton, Hoon Park, Anthony Radford, Sam Ridgway, Anna Rubbo, Judith Snodgrass, Garry Stevens, Susan Stewart, Dalibor Vesely, David Week, Dagmar Weston, Iain Boyd Whyte, Dorian Wiszniewski and Rob Woodbury. xi

Introduction

Architecture and coherence

Figure captions (clockwise from top left ) 1

Scottish Parliament, Edinburgh. Architects: Enric Miralles and Benedetta Tagliabue (EMBT) and RMJM. East façade

2

Scottish Parliament. Quotation from Sir Alexander Gray on north façade, invoking the land and summoning national pride

3

Scottish Parliament. Parliamentarians’ offices

Introduction

Architecture and coherence

Interpretation is ubiquitous in architecture, though occasionally regarded with 1

suspicion. Interpretation is ‘the revenge of the intellect upon art’, according to Susan Sontag. It operates at one remove from the processes of imaginative production, and burdens creativity with layers of meaning, at the cost of an engagement with the materials and practices of artistic making. Sontag’s complaint is actually against a conservative style of interpretation, in which 2

critics strive to excavate the ‘true meaning’ or the ‘latent content’ of a work.

Interpretation surfaces in a positive light in the context of commentary and criticism about works of architecture, but still as an activity apart from design. In one of the few texts on the subject, Architecture and its Interpretation, Juan Pablo Bonta draws the distinction: ‘when a designer discusses his work, he 3

is behaving as an interpreter, not as a designer’. Designers can certainly interpret what they have created, but may not be as competent at interpreting as they are in designing. For Breatriz Colomina, interpretation is ancillary to design, but nonetheless crucial to architecture’s place as a profession. It is the means by which architecture is distinguished from mere building. 4

Architecture ‘is an interpretive, critical act’, according to Colomina. It has a linguistic aspect different from the practice of building: ‘A building is 5

interpreted when its rhetorical mechanism and principles are revealed’.

For these theorists, to interpret a building is to talk about it, articulate, critique, comment and contextualise, and to move architecture into the realm of discursive practice, using verbal language, words and commentary. The interpretive dimension affirms the place of architecture in professional, academic and cultural discourse. In this book we show that interpretation has a role even more crucial than that of asserting architecture’s 3

Introduction

6

authority. Interpretation and design coalesce. Whereas we agree that architecture is a discursive practice, and is abetted by talk and writing, we will demonstrate that to design is to interpret. In this book we examine the consequences that follow from a hermeneutics of design.

The problems of interpretation in architecture We take it for granted that architects interpret contracts, regulations, site conditions and the circumstances of the building users. Contractors, building users and critics strive to interpret drawings and buildings. Architectural theories, treatises, histories, manifestos, commentaries and critiques, from Vitruvius to Koolhaas, present as so many interpretations. In this book we are primarily interested to show how the designer interprets while designing, rather than how critics, historians and commentators interpret buildings. We argue that design is interpretive at its core, an insight that spills over into other considerations of interpretation in architecture. But in this introduction we will just address how the architectural tradition deals with interpretation. Except when it started to address method in the nineteenth century, the architectural treatise rarely considered design as a practice, focusing rather on the finished artefact, and its conformity or otherwise to ideal generative principles. Architectural theorists attended little to the processes by which the sculptor, draftsman, mason or master builder weighed up one possibility against another, or decided which precedent to adopt, or how to deal with the conflicting requirements of the site or of the team. We argue that these moments define architecture at its most interpretive. Architecture is at its core interpretational when designers appear to be making difficult decisions, or more precisely, when they are caught up in creative practices. But we have to search hard for reference to this interpretive function in the legacy of architecture. Interpretation is there, but occluded by a concern with coherence, architecture’s persistent striving for unity. We are critical of coherence as a primary driver in architectural theory, except in so far as it harbours the seeds of a theory of interpretation. Outside of architectural discourse, nineteenth-century historians and theorists of interpretation took the relationship between the part and the whole (unity) as crucial in defining the problems of interpretation. Interpretation is also occluded by architectural historicism. We 7

examine a common and persistent claim made by many that history is characterised by a succession of ages or epochs, each of which has a unitary 8

character best described as its ‘spirit’. There is a spirit of a particular age, different to any other, to which architecture can and does give expression. Architecture interprets an era, and in so doing gives expression to, or 4

Architecture and coherence

embodies, cultural movements: that Florence Cathedral expresses the spirit of the Renaissance, or that the Bilbao Guggenheim Museum captures the character of late modernism. According to historicism, architecture distils the spirit of a time and a people in its unitary artefacts. In so far as the interpretation of buildings burdens architecture with the role of interpreting and unifying history, it is historicist. Whereas some assert that this is architecture’s highest calling, historicism was subjected to scathing critique in David Watkin’s Morality and Architecture , which in turn drew on Karl 9

Popper’s influential The Poverty of Historicism. For Whyte, and contrary to Watkin, the search for and promotion of this spirit represents no deviation from the rationalist tenets of modernism, but is endemic to it.

10

In this

introduction we are interested in how historicism impinges on the issue of interpretation. We show how architecture’s struggle with concepts of coherence and unity bring it into direct contact with issues of interpretation. In turn, contemporary interpretational study advances a critique of historicism. It also provides a way of connecting history and design as processes of translation, as we examine in Chapter 7 (Design amnesia). Should our engagement with interpretation lead to a better or more poetic architecture? That question provokes another: better for whom and in what situation? Our discussion sheds light on how people make such judgements, and how design teams are caught up in a continuous process of evaluating and interpreting (Chapter 6). Our study attempts to sweep away many of the impediments to a clear understanding of architecture as interpretation. In so far as we propose anything better at all, our target is better practice, team working, participation, reflection and teaching, and an understanding of the processes by which we articulate and value one outcome over another. But to position interpretation in the architectural discourse we turn to history.

Architectural interpretation, history and historicism The study of interpretation developed in the domain of words, rather than drawing or making – the province of design. Inquiries into the nature of interpretation emerged in the nineteenth century through the interest of 11

theologians in the methods and practices of interpreting ancient texts. The study of interpretation is referred to as hermeneutics, and it endeavoured to explain how historians construct their narratives. It thereby contributed to a basic understanding of the humanities. The way architecture writes, creates and theorises its own history constitutes architecture’s earliest and most direct 12

contact with hermeneutics.

5

Introduction

Interpretation appeared as a study with the writings of the German theologian and philologist, Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834), who formulated his General Hermeneutics in 1810.

13

Schleiermacher strove

towards a systematic treatment of the subject of interpretation. The styles of history with which he was in dispute tended towards rationalism and conservatism, which he characterised as the ‘dogmatic exegesis and other abuses’ of theologians and lawyers on the one hand, and the arbitrary appeal to artistic genius by art connoisseurs on the other.

14

Had he thought about

architecture, then Schleiermacher might have pointed his criticism more sharply towards the neoclassical idealism of his day, or at least towards the architectural manifestation of these philosophical categories. In architecture, neoclassicism asserted that architecture obeys natural laws, and is subject to the authority of geometrical and absolute principles of reason.

15

For

neoclassicism, history served to uncover the practices of the ancients, the originary moment of architectural production, and its succession, well exemplified in Marc-Antoine Laugier’s (1713–1769) myth of the derivation of all of architecture from the rustic hut.

16

Under this tradition, the purpose of

history was to record exemplars faithfully and to confirm immutable principles, such as the primacy of proportional systems, the classical orders, the connection between the arts, and the coherence and unity of the universe.

17

Contemporary scholars commonly associate this highly principled neoclassical 18

view of history with French rationalism.

In contradistinction to rationalism there developed a different form of idealism, concerned with the contextual nature of historical grounding, a concern with the peculiarities of the time and place in which events unfold, and with the character of a community. Schleiermacher came from this rival tradition, which was largely attributable to an emerging German idealism, exemplified in the historical theorising of Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744–1803), Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835), Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), and Leopold von Ranke (1795–1886). This new ‘historicism’, as opposed to the mere ‘history’ of the neoclassical rationalists, promoted a view that the historian must penetrate the essential spirit of a country or period. According to Alan Colquhoun, this was ‘to reveal the idea 19

beneath the empirical surface of historical events’, an ideal revealed through rigorous scrutiny of evidence and historical facts. This contrasted with the supposed attempts of the rationalists and neoclassicists to shoehorn history into confirmation of a priori principles. Historicism in architecture treats interpretation and history as the processes of uncovering the grand idea, the Spirit of a People (Volkgeist) and the Spirit of the Age (Zeitgeist). Great architecture gives expression to the spirit, mood and aspirations of a people, and history presents it as such. This ideal is more important than architecture’s conformity to principles, and history as the justification or unfolding of those 6

Architecture and coherence

principles. This historicism also bolstered the Romantic movement in art and literature, with its emphasis on subjectivity, imagination and genius. German idealism did not thereby entirely displace French rationalism. Developments in nineteenth-century historiography were also marked by a renewal of the rationalist impulse. The positivism of the French social theorists, Saint-Simon (1760–1825) and August Comte (1798–1857),

20

represented a return to rationalist history, but revived as an experimental practice of observation, explanation and prediction. Positivism treated history as a science. The influential architectural theorist Gottfried Semper (1803–1879) was heir to historicism, a connection illuminated in a study by Mari Hvattum, with reference to the hermeneutical tradition.

21

She positions Semper at the

nexus between the German idealist, historicist tradition and the emerging positivism of the French school of history, the ‘experimental science of the organism of history’.

22

Semper was caught between the historicist and the

rationalist schools of nineteenth-century thought. Each characterises a different view of the aims of interpretation. For German idealism the aim of interpretation was to uncover a significant goal, ambition, spirit or movement in a community or age. The rationalists posited an empirically-based search for a totalising scientific picture, through which it would be possible to predict future events. As for the biological and physical sciences of the day, the ultimate interpretive goal was prediction. In light of our own reading of contemporary hermeneutics and historiographical study, the distinctions between historicism and rationalism appear moot now. For example, Hayden White’s study into contemporary historiography reveals that both approaches are deeply problematic. In contemporary terms the contest is between a value-laden historicism and the value-neutral empiricism of ‘objective’ history.

23

For White all historical

study is conducted from a particular point of view, within a particular horizon, whether one is operating within the historicist tradition or the scientific. We argue this position in Chapter 1 (Architectural hermeneutics) in relation to design. In spite of the challenge of hermeneutics, the tensions between historicism and empirical approaches to architectural history are only too evident in twentieth- and twenty-first-century architectural discourse. Interpretation under historicism is evident in contemporary architectural writing. For Karsten Harries, the main task of architecture ‘is the interpretation of a way of life valid for our period’,

24

a view he also ascribes

with approval to Sigfried Giedion (1888–1968), one of the first systematic historians of modernism. Of course, the post-industrial age differs markedly from the emerging industrial age of Laugier. So our architecture is called to respond to the new global condition. The new historicism is also promoted by Giedion’s protégé, Christian Norberg-Schulz, for whom ‘Modern architecture 7

Introduction

came into existence to help man feel at home in a new world’.

25

Commonly,

historicism requires of the architect a sensitivity to place: ‘primarily it means to 26

identify with a physical and social environment’. As for Semper, this idealism is tempered, or compounded, by an appeal at one moment to rational 27

method,

and more latterly to phenomenological ‘principles’.

28

Schleiermacher, the nineteenth-century founder of the systematic study of hermeneutics, with whom we began this section, was operating within a similar historical problematic. He referred to artistic practice, but made no mention of architecture in his General Hermeneutics. However, he moved in the company of the architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781–1841) and other German-speaking intellectuals. The architectural treatises of the time, and those that followed, indicate no debt to Schleiermacher’s hermeneutics, but each was working through the implications of early modern conceptions of 29

history.

Interpretation as an architectural project What is interpretation? In this book we will focus mainly on the expansive hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900–2002), but Schleiermacher provides a useful starting point. The connection between interpretation and architecture runs deeper than our cursory dealing with the writing of architecture’s history. According to Schleiermacher, the goal of hermeneutics is understanding. In rationalist vein, he asserts that this understanding should be ‘without contradiction’.

30

But interpretation operates in a more important

sense. Interpretation is a reconstruction, and ‘[o]ne has only understood what 31

one has reconstructed in all its relationships and in its context’. Leaving aside the architectural metaphor of reconstruction for the time being (we address this in Part 2 as a matter of edification), this assertion provides us with a preliminary formulation of what constitutes interpretation in architecture. To 32

interpret something is to position it within a set of relationships. There is much more to be said about hermeneutics, but our goal at this stage is to bind the project of hermeneutics to architecture in a way that is stronger than its apparent neglect by traditional architectural writing would suggest.

33

The idea of positioning accords with our common usage of the words ‘interpretation’ and ‘understanding’. One can perhaps claim to understand Mirales’ Scottish parliament building when it is seen in its place, located in its physical, social and political context, and within a broader picture of cultural history, critical discourses and architectural theories. A subcontractor may claim to understand the image of a circle with a cross through it that she sees on the building plan, when she can position it within her lexicon of architectural symbols (light fittings), and position the symbol in 8

Architecture and coherence

relation to the other symbols around it. Positioning is akin to pointing. For Gadamer, intepretation implies ‘pointing in a particular direction’.

34

Pointing,

orienting, positioning, placement, connecting, relating: these architectural terms speak of interpretation. We explore traditional approaches to architectural placement more fully in Chapter 10, where we deal with the form and rituals of the mandala. In Chapter 13 we examine how design can be thought as the assembly of materials that mark out and trace places of the Way (dôjo). This emphasis on the position of a component in relation to those around it provides a basic account of language. For the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913), it is the positioning of a word (sign) with those that accompany it that carries the meaning.

35

Saussure even uses architecture to

characterise how ‘everything depends on relations’.

36

Columns are related to

architraves according to rules of grammar, as are the ordering of words in a sentence. On the other hand the column may be of a particular style, say Doric, in which case it is related to other columns, e.g. Ionic, Corinthian, etc. which are not related spatially. This is an associative relationship.

37

An

exposition of the structuralist language theories that derive from Saussure is beyond our scope here; suffice it to say the idea of the relation is crucial to a basic understanding of language. Positioning and pointing constitute the basis of signs and systems of signification, the beginnings of language and interpretation.

38

Positioning is a convenient architectural metaphor. It alludes to accounts of the first architectural act, the positioning of the pole or gnomon into the ground that forms the centre of a circle and defines the orientation of the city, and its relationship with the sun, the winds and the constellations.

39

Here the positioning presents as an assertion, staking out, 40

defining, orienting and grounding.

Harries alludes to the sacred importance

of placement in architecture. He asks: ‘How can a building place us in time?’

41

The answer resides in providing places for communities where significant events can occur, which are also places of festival: ‘festal places on the ground of everyday dwellings, places where individuals come together and affirm themselves as members of the community, as they join in public reenactments of the essential’.

42

To be positioned is concomitant with

significance, appropriating the rudiments of understanding. This interpretation of the stable position is appropriated readily by historicism, an idealism that associates architecture with an epoch and a place. In Part 3 we explore the place of sacred architectures and unfamiliar traditions as providing encounters with otherness, an alienating, rather than secure and homely encounter. As the earliest notable theorist of architecture, and positioned within the Roman and Greek traditions of building, Marcus Vitruvius Pollio proves a helpful source on interpretation as a process of positioning, and 9

Introduction

affirming coherence within unity. His life overlapped that of the Roman Emperor Augustus (63 BC–AD 14) to whom he dedicated his insights on architecture. In an illuminating book that rethinks Vitruvius’ Ten Books on

Architecture, Indra McEwen positions (or repositions) Vitruvius in the Stoic tradition of Rome.

43

Stoicism was adopted from Greece as the philosophy of

empire. Without the literary intelligence of a Plato (427–347 BC) or Aristotle (384–322 BC) to promote it, stoicism has contributed as one of philosophy’s sub-currents rather than advancing its tide, and it persists in contemporary discourse. It is ‘the secret popular philosophy’ of today’s natural scientific culture, according to Gadamer.

44

The legacy of stoicism accounts for the

impetus within science and philosophy to seek ‘organic unity’ in all things, most obviously manifested in popular science writing.

45

Stoicism ran counter to Plato’s model of transcendent unity. Platonic doctrine placed the significant, the important, the immutable, the ideal and the unitary, in a realm outside human experience, in the celestial realm of the Intelligible. For the Stoic philosophers, on the other hand, unity resided in the world around us, by virtue of the interrelationships between all things. The Roman emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius (121–80 BC) described this unity in terms of a single organism. Always think of the universe as one living organism, with a single substance and a single soul; and observe how all things are submitted to the single perceptivity of this one whole, all are moved by this single impulse, and all play their part in the causation of every event that happens. Remark the intricacy of the skein, the complexity of the web.

46

In contemporary terms, the stoical attitude is one where we understand our position in the interconnected frame of all the parts. A person may be stoical in the face of adversity in that she accepts her condition. She knows how to place current events in the bigger picture. Clarification of the stoical attitude comes from an unlikely source in Adam Smith (1723–1790), the early modern theorist and advocate of capitalism and free enterprise. For Smith, the wise person ‘does not look upon himself as a whole, separated and 47

detached from every other part of nature’.

He recognises that he is an atom,

a particle, within an ‘immense and infinite system, which must and ought to 48

be disposed of, according to the conveniency of the whole’. This shrewd supplicant accepts whatever fortune befalls him happily: ‘if he had known all the connections and dependencies of the different parts of the universe, it is the very lot which he himself would have wished for’.

49

Smith attributes this

and other modernist insights to the stoical philosophers. Understanding one’s place, making sense of it all, whether in adversity or wonder, involves an 10

Architecture and coherence

appreciation of one’s position in the larger circuit of interconnections. Discovering and affirming this coherence constitutes a kind of understanding, the product of a rudimentary and acquiescent mode of interpretation.

Architecture and the part–whole dialectic Finding our place within the whole – the force of this narrative of unity is subject to critical scrutiny. For the philosopher of Pragmatism, William James (1842–1910), the question of how things are perceived as a unity constitutes 50

‘the most central of all philosophical problems’. The question has several aspects. To appeal to unity might be to suggest that everything succumbs to one subject of discourse (philosophy, physics, or perhaps architecture), or that there is a continuity between events and places, connections of influence or causality, or that things are of the same kind (atoms, monads or ideas in the mind of God). The question may also pertain to a unity of purpose, a narrative unity (the progress of history), or a unified field of knowledge. Unity is contrasted with multiplicity, a condition where everything is different, fragmented, un-unified and even chaotic. Whatever the position in the twentieth or early twenty-first century, for the ancient architectural theorist, all was to succumb to a unity, and the elements of architecture had to be related to form a unified whole, within the building and in connection with the universe. To appeal to unity was to draw on concepts of coherence. For Vitruvius, the ancient Stoic, the archetype of organic unity was the human body. As the body exhibits a perfection of proportions, so too 51

should buildings be perfectly proportioned. The architectural tradition of the Renaissance makes much of the word ‘ratio’ in this context, which carries the connotations of calculation, reason and proportion. McEwen relates the term ratio as used by Vitruvius to coherence. Bodies were wholes whose wholeness as qualified matter was, above all, a question of coherence. The agent of coherence – in 52

the body of the world and in all the bodies in it – was ratio.

Coherence was a major component of Stoic thought, and relates further to the binding of all entities into a single organic unity. ‘For Stoics, coherence was the touchstone of truth’ according to McEwen.

53

Clearly,

architecture was to exhibit this property of a binding between the parts, in order for the building to stand up, but also its correct deployment of ratio. If we may persist with our equation of interpretation and coherence, then we see that the advice in Vitruvius’ Ten Books is permeated with the exhortation to 11

Introduction

interpret, to position the elements of architecture, to bind them in the matrix of the organic unity appropriately and correctly. To adhere to correct relationships also invokes symmetry. For Vitruvius, ‘in the human body there is a kind of symmetrical harmony between forearm, foot, palm, finger and other small parts; and so it is with perfect buildings’.

54

In this architecture was in the company of rhetoric, the tradition

that embraced the art and science of speech, writing and texts, which for Socrates (469–399 BC) could also be understood in terms of the arrangement of the human body: ‘Every speech must be put together like a living creature, 55

with a body of its own’. The appeal to unity was a means by which it could be said of the ancient traditions that they made sense of things, as in the modern period, though worked through in different ways. McEwen’s aim is to indicate how the ancient preoccupations with number, ratio, unity, and the arts were implicated in Vitruvius’ deference to the empire and the emperor Augustus. For the Roman world, architecture provided a means of unifying empire. The presence of Rome was stamped across the world by the positioning of triumphal arches, temples, arenas, baths and forums. It was also bound by a common coinage, and images of Hermes, or Mercury, the messenger god, and the god of exchange. McEwen invokes Hermes as a binding agent in the organic unity, not only of empire, but of all things, through the presence of language. McEwen is less interested in teasing out Vitruvius’ hermeneutical project than we are here, but we note that Plato had already attributed language to Hermes, specifically in relation to speech: ‘… the name “Hermes” seems to have something to do with speech: he is an interpreter (hermeneus), a messenger, … a wheeler-dealer – and all 56

these activities involve the power of speech’. So interpretation appears again in Vitruvius, in oblique form under the guise of Hermes, from whom derives the word ‘hermeneutic’. The ancient question of architecture focuses on unity, and the relationship of the parts to that unity, understood as a matter of symmetry and ratio, but how does the quest for coherence in architecture relate to interpretation? For McEwen ‘ratio was a matter of relation, bond’.

57

In this,

architecture already participates in the questions of hermeneutical inquiry. Schleiermacher identifies this relationship as being at the crux of the problem of interpretation: ‘Every utterance or text is only to be understood in a larger context’.

58

More specificially, interpretation is a question of the relationship

between the parts and the whole: ‘the understanding of the individual element is therefore conditioned by the understanding of the whole’.

59

In order to

understand a fragment of text in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (‘So he passed over, and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side’) you need to understand the whole passage from which it is extracted (about the Celestial City, the journey through tribulation and the references to the Book of 12

Architecture and coherence

Revelation). The complete picture is already made up of many fragments. The reader needs to grasp the parts to understand the whole, and the whole is needed to understand the parts. This observation about the circularity of interpretation is central to the hermeneutics of Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911), who succeeded Schleiermacher in advancing the hermeneutical theme, and provided the platform from which Martin Heidegger (1889–1976),

60

and his 61

protégé Gadamer, elaborated the contemporary theory of interpretation. We apply this insight into interpretation as a dynamic dialogue between the parts and the whole to design in Part 1. At this stage in our argument we wish simply to identify this relationship between the parts and the whole in the pre-modern and the early modern canon of architecture, through concepts of symmetry, ratio and coherence. For Vitruvius, ‘Symmetry is a proper agreement between the members of the work itself, and relation between the different parts of the 62

whole general schema’. The section in which he develops this account sets out to educate the architect on The Fundamental Principles of Architecture. Crucial in the account is a positioning of the parts in relation to one another and within the whole. Rigour and precision are concomitant with getting these relationships right: ‘Without symmetry and proportion there can be no principles in the design of any temple; that is, if there is no precise relation 63

between its members, as in the case of those of a well shaped man’. The architectural historian, Rudolf Wittkower, elaborates on the Renaissance concern with symmetry as instilling a unity of part and whole, and in which the circular plan temple, as adumbrated by Andrea Palladio (1508–1580), signified the unity and perfection that is god.

64

Architecture is positioned within a

Platonic schema of meaning and significance. Architecture provides the quintessential interpretation of divinity, or at least of the relationship between the human and the divine. Geometry provides a model of thought to the Renaissance mind, and is complicit in the concept of coherence. How does geometry relate to interpretation? For Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472): ‘the whole matter of 65

building is composed of lineaments and structure’. The architectural theorist, Joseph Rykwert, provides a list of candidate translations from the Latin

lineamenta: form, ideas, definition, plan, schematic outlines, drawing, design and simply lines.

66

Alberti provides the context: ‘All the intent and purpose of

lineaments lies in finding the correct, infallible way of joining and fitting together those lines and angles which define and enclose the surfaces of buildings’.

67

Lineaments prescribe an ‘appropriate place, exact numbers, a

proper scale and a graceful order for whole buildings and for each of their constituent parts, so that the whole form and appearance of the building may depend on the lineaments alone’.

68

Alberti explains that ‘compartition alone

divides up the whole building into the parts by which it is articulated, and 13

Introduction

integrates its every part by composing all the lines and angles into a single, 69

harmonious work that respects utility, dignity and delight’.

Lineaments refer

to the lines of idealised geometry: ‘let lineaments be the precise and correct outline, conceived in the mind, made up of lines and angles, and perfected in the learned intellect and imagination’.

70

Positioning, or placing, is a metaphor

for making sense. So too are binding, ratio, being bound by geometry, and reason. In so far as architecture depended on a coherence between the parts, then it articulated an understanding, an interpretation. In keeping with our alignment of positioning and interpretation, geometrical constructions present as rudimentary modes of interpretation. Of course, any imputation that the Renaissance architect was dealing in interpretation is subservient to the primary requirement of a work that it be beautiful. It was axiomatic in the ancient world and the early Renaissance that beauty entailed a condition of perfection. According to 71

Aristotle, with beautiful things ‘nothing can be added to them or taken away’. Andrea Palladio (1508–1580) amplifies this assertion.

Beauty will result from the form and correspondence of the whole, with respect to the several parts, of the parts with regard to each other, and of these again to the whole; that the structure may appear an entire and complete body, wherein each member agrees with the other, and all necessary to compose what you intend to form.

72

This appeal to the beautiful is an exhortation to participate in the Platonic chain of mimesis, by which the artisan copies an ideal: the carpenter creates a bed from the archetype of a bed, the painter paints an imitation of the bed on a flat surface, and the poet furnishes a further mimetic representation. For Plato each aspires towards the ideal.

73

According to

Hvattum, this doctrine indicates the cosmic order as ‘constituted in a hierarchy of analogies, in which the part takes part in the whole as its analogous 74

representation’. Any work of art is an imitation of an Idea. It participates in

mimesis. The principle of mimesis, ‘understood as an analogous participation of the part in the whole, lies at the heart of Platonic cosmology’.

75

Mimesis

implicates the dialectic between the part and the whole. For the Enlightenment thinkers, mimesis gave way to ratio. From ratio derives the words ‘rational’ and ‘reason’, giving an account, developed as the principle of reason by the Enlightenment mathematician and philosopher, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716), advancing early modern 76

systems of thought that attribute causes in an instrumental way. According to this rationalism, philosophical propositions and assertions about the beautiful in architecture, must be worked through from first principles, and 14

Architecture and coherence

subjected to the rule of contradiction: i.e. anything that involves contradiction is deemed false. In so far as mimesis features in this interpretive schema, as the reproduction of forms or ideas, it is subservient to the rigours of rational interrogation. The critique and development of Platonism by Laugier constitutes an early modern departure from the notion of beauty as an externally imposed ideal, or the work of mimesis as imitation of the ideal. Schooled in the rationalism of René Descartes (1596–1650), Laugier starts his analysis of architecture with a first person account. Why was it that of certain architectural 77

works ‘one thing delighted me and another only pleased me?’ The mimetic account appeals to an external ideal. But the rationalist account starts internally, and is psychological, pertaining to impressions. Laugier was concerned with the various impressions that different architectural works presented to him, because he ‘wanted to penetrate to the cause of these effects’.

78

Beauty as coherence persists, but is transformed into an argument

about efficiency and economy. Of architecture derived from the little rustic hut, Laugier asserts: ‘The parts that are essential are the cause of beauty, the parts introduced by necessity cause every license, the parts added by caprice cause every fault’.

79

Mimesis features in contemporary hermeneutical discourse as matters of reproduction and representation. As we shall see in Chapter 7 (Design amnesia), any imitation is in fact an interpretation, and interpretation depends on the continual renewal of a representation. In so far as the architectural literature engages the issue of mimesis it anticipates the 80

contemporary project of hermeneutical inquiry.

Historicism and positivism in architecture We return to the issue of historiography that marked the early modern period, around the time of the development of hermeneutics under Schleiermacher. The two emergent traditions, those of rationalism (largely a French development) and German idealism both drew on an understanding of the relationship between the part and the whole. The historian and German idealist, Herder, and the historicist tradition that followed him, promoted the

Volksgeist and the Zeitgeist. Historicism drew on concepts of an ‘organic 81

coherence’ of an epoch.

On the other hand, the rationalist tradition included the successors of Descartes, Leibniz, and those influenced by them, such as Laugier. In the nineteenth century, for Comte the social theorist, and the positivist school, history was marked by movements into and out of a condition of organic unity. Periods of organic unity were interspersed with periods of rupture. The 15

Introduction

Medieval period typified the former, with the industrialised nineteenth century exemplifying periods of chaos. Hvattum explains that this ‘historical organicism, with its principle of correspondence and its idea of immanent 82

wholes, formed the foundation for Comte’s social science’. Comte sought an ‘experimental science of the organism of history’.

83

Epochal organisms could

be observed and explained, ‘their future configurations predicted and implemented’.

84

The nineteenth-century epoch was one of crisis. In this context, and drawing on both the ideal and the positivist positions, Semper saw style as a means of giving expression to the spirit of the age. According to Hvattum, ‘the present too should unite in one organic unity, in one coherent epoch, in one style, and in one Volk’.

85

Semper sought the Gesamtkunstwerk, the

combination of several disciplines under a single creative impetus to produce the complete artwork, the ‘aesthetic-organic unification of a “critical” age’.

86

The uncomfortable mix of historicism and positivism are evident in nineteenthcentury and contemporary architectural discourse, wherever it appeals to precedent, the authority of the past, to history and to unity. The rationalist educator, Jean Nicolas Louis Durand (1796–1886), advanced the positivist thesis in architecture, adopting an adversarial position towards Laugier’s story of origins in the rustic hut. He titles this discussion ‘From Imitation of Nature to Utility’.

87

Utility resided in method, and history

provided a derivational typology of built forms, the basis of a method for designing buildings. Within this rationalist tradition the issue of unity is accounted for in terms of method, in which, following Descartes, the whole is to be divided into parts, the parts assembled into wholes, and the process iterated. Unity is dealt with as a process of composition that complies with 88

fitness and economy.

The principles of architecture that he adumbrated were

also explained in terms of the part–whole relationship, as applying to the elements of buildings, the combination of these elements and to the 89

composition of specific buildings. Viollet-le-Duc (1814–1879) also proposed that architecture requires ‘rules methodically applied’

90

where method is a

process of putting everything in its ‘right place’, and doing everything at the ‘right time’.

91

The allegiance to unity is manifested in otherwise disparate theories of twentieth-century architecture. At times, Norberg-Schultz resorts to method as a means of explaining the interconnection of architectural 92

‘intentions’: ‘One intention will follow naturally from the other’. The aspiring 93

architect must know ‘the integrated theory of architecture’. The appeal to unity is evident as he explains that the student of architecture is to be trained in ‘the creation and understanding of architectural totalities, and nothing else … characterized by the interdependence of their parts’.

94

In composing a

symphony, or a work of architecture, ‘it is necessary continuously to keep the 16

Architecture and coherence

95

totality in mind, and to go from the whole to the parts and back to the whole’.

The dynamism hinted at here resonates with Schleiermacher’s hermeneutics. The methodologist Christopher Alexander also draws on a conception of organic unity. This is a fundamental view of the world. It says that when you build a thing you cannot merely build that thing in isolation, but must also repair the world around it, and within it, so that the larger world at that one place becomes more coherent, and more whole; and the thing which you make takes place in the web of nature, as you make it.

96

Similarly for Groak, on the technical problems of building: ‘A central puzzle in discussing buildings is how to reconcile the descriptions and assessment of the whole with the description and assessment of its 97

constituent parts’.

Much contemporary architectural discourse also sustains the positivist account of an era in crisis, impressing the need for a unitary solution, particularly in addressing the urgency of a sustainable architecture. According to architect Richard Rogers: ‘There is an imperative need for a new concept of holistic economic evaluation’.

98

We are currently building cities that

‘segregate and brutalise rather than emancipate and civilise’.

99

Similarly,

Harries advances an exhortation to restoration, rehabilitation and redemption, through architecture, against the prevailing tendency of this age: ‘Technology threatens to transform us into increasingly lonely, rootless, displaced persons’.

100

These pleas are variants of Harries’ call for architecture to be ‘the 101

interpretation of a way of life valid for our period’.

Architecture’s interpretive

role is crucial. For Harries it means considering architecture other than as a mere ‘decorated shed’, and in a manner sensitive to the issue of dwelling. We need to be ‘responsive not just to our individuality and mortality but to that love which lets us experience ourselves as essentially incomplete, in need of others, in need of community’.

102

Such building provides ‘interpretations of

place in an ongoing historical context’.

103

Architecture is a means to

completeness and the restoration of unity. Similarly, Robert Mugerauer’s Interpretations on Behalf of Place presents a carefully considered explanation of the place of interpretation in architecture from a reading of Heidegger, Gadamer, Eliade, Foucault, and the phenomenological tradition. But here again, the interpretation veers towards the unity sought by historicism. For Mugerauer, planning and design are to be informed by ‘careful and caring understanding of human nature, of our cultural and individual displacements, and of our own role in accomplishing or 17

Introduction

104

hindering the building of place’.

The appeal is to ‘thoughtful description and

interpretation of place’, sensitive to environment. The hope resides in ‘selfcritical and originary environmental interpretation, planning, design, and building’

105

that open places where ‘we may become more fully ourselves by 106

belonging together with each other and the world’.

The uncomplicated aim

of sensitive design is infused with a global idealism, and appeal to selfactualisation in keeping with our times. Drawing on phenomenological concepts of ‘world’, Dalibor Vesely also appeals to a unifying condition that underlies our being, and which we need to tap into: ‘The relative constancy and incompleteness of all human situations has its source in the wholeness of the latent world, the silently structured continuum in which we live and act spontaneously and which we all share’.

107

The contemporary explanation of the hermeneutical processes offered by Gadamer, proffers a potent critique of the dependence of the project of history on both the idealistic and rationalistic conceptions of unity. For example, in his essay the Relevance of the Beautiful, Gadamer tackles the Platonic assertion that the heavenly order of the cosmos provides the true vision of the beautiful.

108

He shifts the language to a consideration of

tradition, which pertains to transmission rather than conservation. Transmission involves ‘learning how to grasp and express the past anew’.

109

He then equates transmission to translation, as if translating a written work from German to French. This translation process applies equally to architectural translation: ‘we let the past be for us as we are now, not by repeated experience of it, but through an encounter with it’.

110

In engaging with

tradition, we do not just repeat what we know, as if to preserve monuments. 111

He also establishes that every translation is an interpretation.

We expand on

the character of this dynamic, hermeneutical engagement with history in Chapter 7 (Design amnesia). In Truth and Method, Gadamer enlists the insights of Heidegger to shift the discussion from a concern with unity, which implies a permanent condition, to that of tradition, which is something under constant negotiation and dynamic collective determination.

112

Understanding a work of art,

architecture or literature requires an appreciation of the place of the part within the whole, but the whole is the complex cultural condition with which any constitution of the parts is in dialogue. In The Hermeneutics of Sacred

Architecture, Lindsay Jones argues against the consideration of buildings as ever wholly completed.

113

In certain religious contexts, the building may be

constructed, reconstructed and renewed in ways that it is difficult to explain in functional and economic terms (the repeated rebuilding of the Ise shrines for example). Buildings are also incomplete in the sense that their meanings are never stabilised and fixed.

114

This is an argument against conceptions of

architecture as dealing in unities and certainties. Coherence is a transitory 18

Architecture and coherence

phenomenon, an interpretation of a particular time and place, and prone to revision and renewal. Histories and buildings are never complete, a metaphor of the play that is interpretation. We outline Gadamer’s concepts of dialogue and play in Part 1. But before embarking on that project, we need to examine further the way the architectural tradition presents the antithesis of unity, that is, multiplicity, disunity and fragmentation.

Architecture against coherence As if in rebellion against the historicist legacy of architecture, the fragment has more value than the whole in certain quarters of contemporary design theory. According to designer and theorist Roger Connah: Fragments seem key to this century, whether as comments on composition, decomposition, personal thinking, on this century itself, on theories of design or a theory of the end of design, or on 115

someone else’s fragmentary commentary or approach.

Vesely employs the concept of the fragment to develop the theme of the part and the whole in architecture. He weaves the fragment into an interesting account of the development of optics and perspective through the Medieval and Renaissance periods. The highly technologised modern period is marked by ‘the destructive fragmentation of reality into isolated facts, data, and systems’,

116

but it need not be so, according to Vesely. There is a

curative aspect to the fragment through a process that he describes as ‘the restorative mapping and articulation of the world’.

117

He sees contemporary

hermeneutics, from Schleiermacher to Gadamer, as contributing to this 118

recuperative role.

The paintings of Paul Cézanne, collage of Georges Braque

and others of the schools of cubism and surrealism also demonstrate this restorative aspect, through the fragmented character of their images, the multiplicity of perspective views, through the presentation of ambiguity, and by situating objects in ‘a radically new structure of space’.

119

For Vesely, this

visual fragmentation frees objects to become part of ‘the newly articulated world’.

120

It changes mere objects into meaningful, situated things. The

surrealists also developed this insight through their concept of the objet: the object out of place that sets up incongruous relationships and provokes new meanings.

121

Vesely regards this function of fragmentation as having a

restorative role. It brings things back to the whole, or at least ‘the world’ understood as such. Other architectural theorists are more motivated to shatter unities, and move towards strategies that draw on the trope of irony. The appeal to 19

Introduction

irony and fragmentation is an insight developed by the theorist of history, Hayden White, in seeking to explain Michel Foucault’s (1926–1984) intellectual strategies to historians with an ostensibly empirical orientation.

122

The

part–whole dialectic of the modern era is marked by metonymy and synecdoche, that is, a trope in which the part is used to stand in for the whole. It is a kind of reduction. In synecdoche we present objects obliquely by making reference to one of their components or properties: to ‘pay with plastic’, meaning to validate a transaction by offering a credit card, or to ‘defer to the chair’, meaning to obey the leader of the committee. By this reading, Durand’s appeal to method is metonymic in that it is a reduction. Durand claims to have captured the complexity of architecture and of composition, merely by dealing with the arrangement of components on a grid according to rules. Putting things in their place in this way is an attempt to use the part to stand in 123

for the whole.

Any intellectualising is prone to this endeavour, but, following

Foucault, White characterises the current age as one in which we are deeply sceptical of all such totalising moves. Not only are we suspicious, but may wilfully assert unity, knowing its opposite to be the case, or simply say one thing as a means of grasping its opposite. If the early moderns indulged metonymy and synecdoche, the trope of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is irony, a kind of dissimulation, asserting a proposition in order to mask its untruth, well expressed in Baudrillard’s essay Simulacra and

Simulation.

124

In terms of interpretation as placement, irony marks a wilful

displacement, or misplacement, a ruse to lose oneself and others. It is a deliberate attempt at confounding attempts to establish coherence. An ironical reading of history suggests an extreme re-reading, and reconstruction, of the past. The radical philosopher Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995) accomplishes such a reading in his interpretation of the seeds of the 125

Enlightenment in the thinking of Leibniz and the Baroque.

Leibniz ostensibly

drew attention to unity in his account of the basis of understanding. Now, this interconnection, or this adapting of all created things to each one, and of each one to all the others, means that each simple substance has relationships which express all the others, and that 126

it is therefore a perpetual living mirror of the universe.

Deleuze picks up on the mirroring aspects of this assertion in his elaboration of the Baroque, which was a period that saw rapid development in the use of optics, simulation machines and scenography. It was a period of optical illusion, as evident in the use of paintings to exaggerate and contort the size and extent of spaces. For Deleuze the most profound impact of the Baroque was to set in train the realisation that reality is illusive and illusional: ‘The baroque artists know well that hallucination does not feign presence, 20

Architecture and coherence

but that presence is hallucinatory’.

127

Deleuze draws on the sumptuous

decadence of the Baroque and its folded surfaces, derided by the later rationalists such as Laugier. The planes and grids of Descartes’ orthogonal world of extension are supplanted by the curves and folds of the Baroque, for which Leibniz’s calculus provides a metaphor. The treatise of Guarino Guarini (1624–1683)

128

hints at the baroque spirit in architecture in inviting

departure from the rules and the invention of new rules. The Baroque was a period of speculation, flaunting of conventions and playing at the edges of a correct and well-mannered architecture. For Deleuze the spatiality of the Baroque was characterised by organicism, of conic sections rather than straight lines, the oblique view rather than the elevation, and the labyrinth rather than the ordered plan. The folding of space extends to a consideration of time, and for Deleuze any moment in time (an event) ‘is a vibration with an 129

infinity of harmonics or submultiples’.

In his admiration of the Baroque and in other historical accounts, Deleuze offers a concerted break with historicism by showing time and history in fragmented manner, as discontinuous, folded and alienating. Foucault presents similar histories, as symptoms, 131

past’.

130

the ‘disremembrance of things

According to White, Foucault (and we would say the same of Deleuze)

attempts to present history ‘as a totality the sum of which is less than the 132

parts that make it up’.

Certain design theorists attuned to this break with historicism articulate design as just such a disjunctive exercise. Bernard Tschumi’s

Manhattan Transcripts provides an interesting excursion into the contemporary academic design studio, one that trades in the discontinuity of events. The programme or brief for a project assumes a narrative role as a provocation rather than a set of requirements or criteria. For example, in Manhattan

Transcripts a brief for an urban park is structured around the narrative of a murder story, presenting a programme ‘of the most extreme nature’.

133

For

Tschumi, ‘Disjunctions between movements, programs, and spaces inevitably follow as each pursues a distinct logic, while their confrontations produce the most unlikely combinations’.

134

Such an approach to design operates through

subversion: ‘attempts to play with the fragments of a given reality at the same time as the rational structure of abstract concepts, while constantly questioning 135

the nature of architectural signs’.

Contemporary approaches to design attest 136

to the vigour of such unsettling strategies,

suggesting that architecture is not

only about finding a place and a time, but about dislocation. If there is the part 137

and the whole then there is also the remainder,

always a gap. This is hinted 138

by Schleiermacher: ‘We arrive nearly everywhere via a leap’.

We examine the

gap from the point of view of the hermeneutics of otherness in Chapter 12 (Thinking through the gap), and the event as a phenomenon, appearance, a coming into sight, and a showing, in Chapter 13 (Random thoughts on the Way). 21

Introduction

Conclusions In summary, we began with the proposition that architecture is interpretational in so far as it involves positioning. To position something is to invoke a primary architectural moment. To be positioned is also to hold a point of view, an interpretation, or is perhaps the start of an interpretation. We considered how this rudimentary understanding of interpretation implicates coherence, a major insight of the ancient Vitruvian legacy, which dominated the architectural treatises of the Renaissance and the early moderns. This is also an argument about the part and the whole. Hermeneutics, the study of interpretation, grasps the problematic of the part and the whole as pivotal. In order to understand a part of a text one needs to understand the whole. The whole can only be understood as an amalgamation of so many parts. The same applies to the form of a building, according to the classical tradition. It was thought that each element must be positioned and proportioned so as to form a unity that is the building. The building also imitates a wider unity or universal order. Coherence between the parts is concomitant with the coherence of understanding. Hermeneutics as a study emerged from early in the nineteenth century, and addressed two rival conceptions of history, that of the historicists and that of the positivists. Both were concerned with the part–whole dialectic in different ways. It is in this debate about history that architecture finds immediate contact with hermeneutics. Architecture makes reference to the past, and the history of architecture features prominently in its discourses. Architecture is concerned with the part–whole relation, and in this respect is already interpretational. Although the architectural legacy says little about interpretation directly, we suggest that it does so in an oblique way, in so far as its theories pertain to coherence, ratio, unity, imitation and fragmentation. In the latter case contemporary design in the age of irony seeks measures to break with coherence. Hermeneutics participates in this play. We have also shown how certain architectural texts that draw on Gadamer’s hermeneutics drift into the territory that he critiques so thoroughly: architectural historicism. The expectation that architecture must rise to the call of its dual potential to give expression to an age, and to redeem society from the evils that beset it, is a particular anxiety deemed strange by those with 139

less of a stake in upholding the authority of a profession.

At the very least,

such historicism occludes the project of design as interpretation, to which we turn in Chapter 1.

22

Part 1 Play

The first version of Chapter 1, Architectural hermeneutics, appeared in 1991 under the title Is Designing Hermeneutical?, though it was not published until 1

six years later. Prior to the time of writing, we thought the debate about whether you could, or needed to, apply the methods of science to study in architectural design had receded, and no longer provoked interest. Philosophers of science had already established that the contingent, cultural and contested workings of the humanities provided a better ‘model’ of the methods of laboratory science in any case. Architectural practice had long decided that there was no need to appeal to science to legitimate its activities, and the studio teaching method, with its open-ended, dialogical and materiallybased practices, had reasserted itself as a highly respected model of education.

2

But there was another factor that influenced design research. In 1991 optimism about the computer was at its zenith. Preoccupied with its technical agenda, with little time or inclination to absorb the wider debates or work out their implications, it was an easy matter for computer-oriented researchers to fall into the simple research formula: a science of design.

3

Unaware of the regressive nature of this move, a return to nineteenth- and early twentieth-century positivism, and bolstered by the confidence that comes from a positive programme able to attract research funding, at least one university department changed its name to the Department of Architectural and Design Science. Counter to this regressive scientism, the hermeneutical explanation of studio practice was welcomed by design studio colleagues as a liberating, productive and rigorous explanation of design. But some 23

Interpretation in architecture

colleagues were suspicious of design science being taken as an appropriate target. Who still believes in a science of design? This essay was designed to hit hard. It focused on a particular text that had currency in computer-oriented studies, and that represents a prevalent design research genre. We were able to demonstrate how entrenched the position of positivist science had become, its anachronism, and the ways that it occluded the humanisticorientation of a commonsense characterisation of design as ‘reflection in action’. Our initial target, the science of design, is still a relevant opponent. It is still usual to equate the terms ‘research’ and ‘science’, and even subsume research within science. For example, UNESCO has a ‘global scientific committee’ charged with identifying ‘overriding, global issues and challenges in the areas of higher education, research and knowledge’ (http://portal.unesco.org). If appeals to science are outdated then why do we still have ‘scientific committees’ dealing with the general matters of education? Views about research are changing, and without fanfare. In the United Kingdom there are now eight major government-sponsored research funding councils, supporting science, medicine, engineering and the social sciences. The latest funding body is the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) that explicitly encourages, and funds, art and design practice as modes of research, and creative works, exhibitions, designs, buildings, 4

compositions and performances as research output. In its documentation and practice, this research council seems genuinely led by a desire to assert subject matter, approaches and methods that come from within the arts and humanities, without needing to draw on the authority and techniques of science. This triumph, however, exposes another imperative, that of economic benefit. Though science is on the outer, art and design claim legitimacy through the size, growth and profitability of the ‘creative industries sector’, an issue we address in Chapters 4, 5 and 11. Although we set positivist science as our primary opponent in Chapter 1, this was not its main point. Rather, the chapter elevates play, and a rehabilitation of the play element of design, as a rigorous object of study. Contemporary architectural theory now largely ignores the vast literature on systems theory and design methods against which we argued in this essay. We use design science as a springboard. From it we plunge into the more productive metaphor of design as play, and the whole apparatus of hermeneutical inquiry. We concur with Huizinga, the theorist of the game, that 5

play underpins all of culture, and provides the meaningful basis for work.

To suggest rigour in the context of play brings to light the constraints of play, or the rules of the game. We detected confusion among design researchers on the characteristics of rule. Artificial intelligence had 24

Play

reached design studies and was at its peak by the time this essay appeared. There were those who sought to codify the rules of ‘design languages’, and rules for design decision-making. We also detected a quasi-liberalism developing around the metaphor of the rule. Rules don’t need to be constraints. Designers can make up their own rules. What can be more liberating than that! In Chapter 2, Playing by the rules, we examine the rule from the perspective of interpretation theory, which in turn draws on its legacies in the writings of Aristotle. A rule is archetypically a statement, written down or memorised, that accounts for nothing without its skilful application. In so far as design participates in rules, it occurs at the coalface of application. The chapter serves to introduce the hermeneutical account of virtue ethics, and how it implicates design. Donald Schön provides a helpful account of the early interest in creativity that sparked so much systems-oriented research in the 1950s. The race was on to produce the most creative workforce, and to be the most creative nation. Creativity held the key to economic success. The quest for creativity has taken several turns since then. Researchers interested in computational methods sought to strengthen their discipline by appearing to take on the really difficult problems. Computers and computational methods can be deployed to solve puzzles, arguably to solve problems, perhaps to undertake routine design tasks, but the ultimate challenge is raw creativity – cutting-edge innovation, and solving problems that are not yet properly formed. On the one hand this move towards creativity demonstrated confidence, but it also indicated a profound insecurity. Paradoxically, creativity is easier to deal with as a research topic than producing systematic methods to solve practical and real problems, such as the design of a cost-effective and energy-efficient office building. It is a simple matter to judge the failure of a goal-directed system, or theories of goal-directed instrumental reason. Creativity is another matter. It is open-ended, wasteful and often misses the mark. In computational terms it has random generation on its side as an acceptable method. Creativity provides the dual benefit that it purports to deal with issues of consequence, and yet widens the field for a more speculative kind of research, less driven by the necessity to produce economic results. This move to creativity was not futile. Another success to claim was applicability in the world of art, design and performance. Artists, composers and designers are good at adopting tools, techniques and materials from all quarters. It matters less to artists that the algorithms at their disposal have validity as models of human cognition, and they are probably not interested in handing their own procedures over to a computer in any case. The creative professions have benefited from being brought on board by the design scientists. In Chapter 3, Creativity as commonplace, had its origins at a conference entitled ‘Creativity and Cognition’. It seeks to show that creativity 25

Interpretation in architecture

is a commonplace in all areas of human endeavour, even the ‘simple’ matter of interpreting a text. There is, after all, no simple model of reason to which we need append creativity, as something warranting special attention. Neither is there anything particularly serious, which we need to embellish with the extraneous concept of play.

26

Chapter 1

Architectural hermeneutics

Figure captions (clockwise from top left ) 1–5

The design studio as a site of interpretation. Architecture: School of Arts, Culture and Environment, The University of Edinburgh. Work by students of Adrian Hawker

Chapter 1

Architectural hermeneutics

1

Is designing hermeneutical? It is commonly supposed that design activity can be described, codified and explained in terms of an algorithmic logic model derived from language theory. The model, exemplified in the work of Stiny, Knight, Mitchell, Kalay and Coyne et al., has been the basis of much research 2

in architectural design methodology and CAD. Mitchell gives an elegant 3

description of the model. With reference to nineteenth-century formalpictorial positivism, and the twentieth-century logical positivism of Carnap, he asserts that design can be described in words that make up a critical language and such word descriptions can be formalised using the notation of first-order predicate calculus. Design worlds, he says, consist of ‘graphic tokens which, like words, can be manipulated according to certain grammatical rules’. He sees design processes ‘as computations in design worlds with the objective of satisfying predicates of form and function stated 4

in a critical language’. Mitchell specifies that there are three main parts to this model: First … the relationship of criticism to design may be understood as a matter of truth-functional semantics of a critical language in a design world. Second … design worlds may be specified by formal grammars. Third … the rules of such grammars encode knowledge of how to put together buildings that function adequately. Thus the relation of form to function is strongly mediated by the syntactic and semantic rules under which a designer operates.

5

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Interpretation in architecture

He asserts that ‘the first step in precise formulation of a design world is to specify the primitives (kinds of elementary graphic tokens) out of which designs may be assembled’.

6

This model presupposes that the process of designing is analogous or equivalent to the process by which we use language; that the process can be described in terms of primary tokens (for example, geometric shapes) which equate to words; and that these primary elements can be manipulated according to grammatical rules so as to build up coherent structures in the same manner that words can be combined in accordance with the rules of logic to form meaningful sentences. The model derives from a positivist theory of language, which relies for its cohesion and integrity on the concept that verbal atoms (words) correspond to objects in the real world. These primary verbal tokens combine to form larger information segments such as sentences. To be meaningful, say the positivists, these combinations of verbal tokens or word atoms must be assembled according to the rules of formal logic. If they do not conform to these rules they are meaningless and the statements they convey are false. In the following we shall attempt to show the limitations of this view of language, a view which underpins many prevailing assumptions concerning the nature of the design process, in particular those which make appeal to logic, formal systems and the computational paradigms of artificial intelligence.

Positivist concepts of language The positivist concept of an exact and determinate language made up of symbols that correspond to a unique set of atomic facts traces back to Plato. 7

He speaks of the ‘weakness of the logos’, by which he means that spoken language is treacherous, that it has a tendency to slip out of our control so that meanings disappear into the thickets of ambiguity, self-contradiction and 8

paradox. Ordinary spoken language is unequal to the task of representing reality; it does not directly correspond to its referent. Ordinary language must be replaced by a system of signs that corresponds exactly to the structure of what is. To control our thinking we must resort to a system of signs that can be controlled, a formal language that always behaves according to the dictates of logic. For Plato, the paradigmatic expression of such a language was the language of mathematics; the ideal language for thinking is one in which words function like numbers. In this way, ‘the word, just like the number, becomes the mere sign of a being that is well-defined and hence pre-known’.

9

Only statements expressed in such a formal language could lay claim to certainty. 30

Architectural hermeneutics

The logical positivists attempted to formulate a ‘language of science’, constructed on the base of mathematical logic. Their aim was to define a precise, certain and meaningful language that is clearly demarcated 10

from meaningless pseudo-sentences. They based their enterprise on the concept of logical atomism, the notion that words have a direct correspondence to things that are discrete, explicit and determinate; that words and what they stand for are like atoms or primary elements; and that words, as primary elements of language, can be brought together in logical sequences to form statements that are meaningful because they are certain, possessing a truth that can be tested against the rules of logic and against the things or facts they represent. These efforts culminated in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico11

Philosophicus, the definitive exposition of the positivist theory of language, in which he specified just such a precise and perfect language, one which would escape opinions, purposes, values and intentions. All subjective notions and purposive meanings were banished from the domain of concrete experience. He maintained that ‘the ultimate constituents of the world are a unique set of atomic facts whose combinations are pictured or mirrored in the relations among symbols in a logically perfect language’, that ‘the world can be described completely by knowing all these atomic propositions’, and that ‘there is one basic use of language: to convey information’. It follows 12

that ‘all language which conveys information is exact and determinate’. The

Tractatus thus defines the world in terms of a set of atomic facts that can be expressed in logically independent propositions. Everything can be expressed in the formal language of logic: ‘The limits of my language mean the limits of 13

my world. Logic fills the world: the limits of the world are also its limits.’

Wittgenstein’s critique of positivist concepts of language With the appearance of the Tractatus the positivist position seemed invincible. By the middle of the twentieth century, however, it was wholly demolished, defeated not so much by attacks from outside, but from within. Positivism selfdestructed. It fell apart under the self-reflexive impact of its own criteria. The most potent of these internal assaults came from Wittgenstein himself, who turned his immense critical talents to an analysis of his own earlier thinking, dismantled the Tractatus and consigned to irrelevance the positivist notion that atomic units of language correspond to realities in an objective world. Wittgenstein negates the assertion that logical language alone is meaningful by pointing to the language of ordinary use, which manages to communicate meanings even though it blatantly fails to conform to the 31

Interpretation in architecture

constraints of formal logic. The ‘weakness of the logos’ is not so powerless that it cannot adequately convey meanings for our everyday purposes. Live language, language as it is spoken in the context of ordinary human activity, is not an exact system of invented signs. Wittgenstein expresses this in an architectural metaphor: Our language can be seen as an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, of houses with additions from various periods and this surrounded by a multitude of new 14

boroughs with straight regular streets and uniform houses.

The new boroughs with straight streets and uniform houses are the formal languages of mathematics and logic; and the maze of little streets and squares is language as it is spoken in the context of the lived world. Wittgenstein says that ‘the speaking of language is part of an 15

activity, or a form of life’. We can only understand spoken language in the context in which it is spoken. Ordinary language is entwined in networks of common sense conventions; linguistic practices cannot be separated from concrete ‘life forms’, that is, attitudes, world views and a cultural ethos. Our ability to understand everyday speech depends on our ability to reduce the ambiguity of the individual terms by placing them within the global context of the situation in which they are used. It is not necessary to eliminate ambiguity; we do not need to take refuge in a formal language. We have a sense of the situation; we pick up clues and cues in the parts and the whole and by a filtering process involving a large degree of ‘ambiguity tolerance’ we sift out possibilities and arrive at a sufficient sense for the purposes at hand. Our ability to understand language is a matter of our sharing routes of interest and feeling, modes of response, senses of humour and of significance and of fulfillment, of what is outrageous, of what is similar to what else, what a rebuke, what forgiveness, of when an utterance is an assertion, when an appeal, when an explanation – all the whirl of organism 16

Wittgenstein calls ‘forms of life’.

When children learn a language they are engaged in a form of life. They share at least some of the goals and interests of their parents and other teachers, and these goals and interests and the activity they are engaged in with others in a particular situation reduce the possible references of the words that are being used. The teacher does not define words for the child; the child and the teacher understand each other and learning can take place not because the child learns rules but because the child and the teacher share a 32

Architectural hermeneutics

context. Wittgenstein says, ‘What one acquires here is not a technique; one learns correct judgements. There are also rules, but they do not form a system, and only experienced people can apply them right. Unlike calculation rules.’

17

Wittgenstein says that when we engage in ordinary spoken language in our daily activities we are involved in language games. We do not so much learn a language as participate in it, as we participate in playing games; and we do not so much learn a language as learn the rules of the games in which language operates. The rules of language change as the life situation, that is, the life game, changes. When as children we learn these games, we are at the same time being trained to view the world in certain socially determined ways. Language games are played according to rules that apply within a particular situation. Our activities are inseparably interwoven with language; we live in a language-constituted world; and in order to act in that world we must know how to play the language game in the particular circumstances that apply in the situation in which we find ourselves. We must know the rules of the language game that is being played at any moment; we must know the appropriate responses to whatever is said. The rules of language are immanent within particular language games. They are indigenous to the games themselves. They cannot be disentangled from the particular situations in which they occur, so that we cannot specify common structures that apply to all language situations. They cannot be abstracted from the language games and made to constitute a transcendental grammar. There is no grammar that joins the games one to another. Language games stand as if in isolation from each other. They are hermetically sealed. Wittgenstein has shown not only that language is part of life forms, but also that language forms life; it is constitutive of the world we experience. Language frames the way we see the things in the world; and therefore language cannot be an object that we can invent or create. Our relationship with language is not one of subject and object, since we are within language and part of its process. A self-reflexive paradox vitiates the positivist model of language: any model that purports to describe language in terms of rules must stand outside language and regard it as an object but, as Wittgenstein insists, we are so involved in the language games we play that we cannot stand outside them. To determine rules for language is to specify what language should do; but as soon as we attempt to determine the rules governing what language does in fact, we are in a double bind, because we are caught up in the language game and objectivity is forever elusive. To catch language in the net of rules we need rules by which to recognise the context in which the rules apply, rules to recognise the lived situation, the intentions of the speaker, the anticipations of the listener, and other rules in an endless series. These given, 33

Interpretation in architecture

we then need yet more rules to govern the application of these meta-rules, 18

and so on to infinite regress.

Plato’s enterprise of constructing a perfect and precise language is doomed to failure. Such a language only seems more certain and true than the everyday spoken language of the marketplace and the dinner table. The meanings of the words ‘certainty’ and ‘truth’ are dependent on the situation in which they are used in the context of a language event. We cannot look to a precise, logical language to provide ultimately true answers; at best we can seek responses that are appropriate within the context of a particular situation. Statements made in ordinary language usage are not true or false but, as Austin says, felicitous or infelicitous, which is to say, appropriate or inappropriate within the context of the language game being played.

19

A

statement either fits the situation in which it appears or it does not. It is felicitous and meaningful if it fits with or is appropriate in the context of the state of play, but if it does not fit or is inappropriate it is then infelicitous and incomprehensible. When an inappropriate and incomprehensible statement intrudes into the language game, the situation seizes up and the game stops. In summary, Wittgenstein’s radical attack on the atomic model of language is based on the argument that the meanings of words do not derive from a logical calculus. First, we cannot give a precise definition of a word because its meaning is forever changing according to the situation in which it is used, and the meaning of a word is precisely its use. We cannot, therefore, discern the meanings of words and sentences in isolation or in the abstract. A word is polysemic; its various meanings interpenetrate and are in a continual flux that eludes definition and rules. The definition of the word is blurred and continually changing; it is indefinitely flexible. Second, we define terms. We construct meanings, and the use of a term is determined by arbitrary convention. So similarly, grammars do not exist until we construct them; and we construct them according to conventions. Because of the porosity and flexibility of meaning that inheres within language we cannot specify a universal and transcendental grammar. The forms that language takes are determined by its usage: language is intimately related to particular human actions and anticipations and expectations of such actions. Rules are not imposed on the language from without and as upon an object, but inhere within a particular language game played in a particular life situation, which forms part of a socially constituted set of conventions. Wittgenstein’s description of language as a game highlights the point that the meaning of language does not depend on its fragmentary units having a one-to-one correspondence to things in an extra-linguistic world, units that combine to form logical structures. The meaning of language depends, 34

Architectural hermeneutics

rather, on the way it is used in a context. The bewitchment of language that Socrates deplored in the Cratylus cannot be avoided by replacing its ambiguities and paradoxes with precise symbols designating a reality that stands outside of language. Whatever reality ‘out there’ might be, it is inextricably interwoven with language, and cannot be considered except in the context of language as it is spoken in ordinary discourse. Language is not a sign system, a language of symbols; nor is it an information system. It is a game, and as such it breaks out of the limits that any symbolic system necessarily implies. It is not made up of atomic tokens that represent or correspond to elements of reality in an extra-linguistic world; and it cannot be forced into the straitjacket of formal grammars without altering what it really is.

The hermeneutical circle Coming to the analysis of language from an entirely different direction, hermeneutic philosophy reaches similar conclusions. Hermeneutic studies attempt to answer the question, How does understanding arise? How, for example, do we understand everyday language if, as we have seen, it does not follow the rules of logic and is shot through with ambiguities and imprecision? Philosophical hermeneutics answers that when we understand language, or anything else for that matter, it is because of the working of the hermeneutical 20

circle.

The hermeneutical circle has to do with the circular relation of the whole and its parts in any event of interpretation. At first viewing it would seem that we cannot understand the meaning of a part of a language event until we grasp the meaning of the whole; and we cannot understand the meaning of the whole until we grasp the meaning of the parts. That is, we cannot understand the meanings of the words that make up a sentence until we can locate them in the context of the sentence as a whole; and we cannot understand the meaning of the whole sentence until we understand the meanings of the words that it comprises. By extension, the meaning of a 21

concept depends on the context (or the horizon)

within which it occurs; but

this context is made up of the concepts to which it gives meaning. Any act of understanding language involves interplay of text and context. The whole and the part give meaning to each other; understanding is circular. Thus we understand what someone says to us or something we read because of a reciprocal relationship between the whole and the part. These are inseparable in the process of interpretation. The meaning of the sentence as a whole reflects back and modifies the meanings of its component parts, the words. The whole can only be understood in terms of its 35

Interpretation in architecture

constitutive parts and these parts in turn can only be construed in terms of the whole that they constitute. This formulation may appear simple or even banal, but the apparent simplicity is deceptive. There is a logical contradiction concealed in the circle of interaction between whole and part: if we must understand the whole before we can understand the parts and yet the parts derive their meaning from the whole, then understanding can never begin. We cannot start with a whole that has no parts; and we cannot start with the parts until we understand the whole. This paradox does not imply that the circle is vicious, but merely that logic is inadequate to the task of understanding the working of understanding. Yet understanding occurs, so there must be some leap that enables us to understand the whole and the parts at the same time, however contrary to the rules of logic this may seem. Looking at this from a slightly different viewpoint, logic would seem to indicate that we can only understand a sentence after it has been construed as a whole, so that the meanings of its constituent parts can then be understood in retrospect. Understanding of language, however, does not proceed in this retrospective manner, but at the same time as the language event takes place. We understand words as they are uttered. On a larger scale, we cannot fully understand the parts of a text except in the light of the text as a whole, but we nevertheless understand the parts as we read them and before we have completed reading the whole text. How is this possible? As Gadamer states: A person who is trying to understand a text is always performing an act of projecting. He projects before himself a meaning for the text as a whole as soon as some initial meaning emerges in the text. Again, the latter emerges only because he is reading the text with particular expectations in regard to a certain meaning. The working of this fore-project, which is constantly revised in terms of what emerges as he penetrates into the meaning, is 22

understanding what is there.

When reading a text or hearing a speech utterance, we have initial intimations and expectations of what the meaning of the whole will be, and interpret accordingly what we are reading or hearing at the moment. We pick up clues and cues from the parts, and from these construct an antecedent formulation of the whole, which then functions in a dialectical fashion to refine and redefine the parts. We move from partial and disjointed insights to an understanding of the whole and back to the yet-to-be-understood portions of the text. As soon as we initially discover some elements that can be understood, we sketch out the meaning of the whole text. We cast forward (or 36

Architectural hermeneutics

fore-cast) a preliminary project, which is progressively corrected as the process of understanding advances. Interpretation brings with it an anticipation, albeit vague and informal, of the meaning of the whole; and the light of this anticipation plays back to illuminate the parts. This prior understanding is in turn corrected or confirmed, and gradually specified, as the details react upon it. That is to say, we project a meaning of the whole even as we begin to read the text or hear the speaker and understand the parts accordingly. This preliminary projection is continually revised as the reader or listener penetrates deeper into the meaning of the parts. The projection, at first unclear and only existing in outline, plays back into the interpretations of the parts, requiring their revision even as the projected meaning itself is continually revised in the light of the interpretation and increasing understanding of the parts. By this process of to-and-fro reflection the understanding of the whole gradually emerges. As Habermas puts it, the future exists as a horizon of expectations, which fuse hypothetically the fragments of previous experience into an intuitively grasped totality. We anticipate end states by reference to which events, both past and present, smoothly coalesce into ‘action-orienting stories’.

23

This is a cycle of anticipation and revision. We

anticipate the outcome of our activities and interpretation proceeds in the ambience of an anticipated outcome. The outcome permeates our present understanding. Understanding thus involves a process of projection, but what is the nature of this projection? Describing what he calls the ‘forestructure of understanding’, Heidegger says that in any interpretive event, such as understanding spoken language, a text or the meaning of an object, before we begin consciously to interpret we have already placed the matter to be interpreted in a certain context, viewed it from a pre-given perspective, and conceived it in a certain way.

24

The process that Heidegger describes is that every revision of the fore-project is capable of projecting before itself a new project of meaning, that rival projects can emerge side by side until it becomes clearer what the unity of meaning is, that interpretation begins with fore-conceptions that are replaced by more suitable ones. This constant process of new projection is the movement of 25

understanding and interpretation.

Gadamer terms these forestructures ‘prejudices’, with the provocative intent of calling into question the Enlightenment’s ‘prejudice against prejudice’, which he sees as a false interpretation of the nature of 37

Interpretation in architecture

consciousness and as instrumental in creating an ethos of alienation. He aims to rehabilitate prejudice (pre-judging), rescuing it from its pejorative connotations. All understanding, he says, necessarily involves prejudice, foremeanings that are not fully objectifiable. These prejudices can either be enabling or disabling, depending on the way in which they are opened up to hermeneutical understanding. Interpretation, then, is ‘the working out of possibilities projected in understanding’, that is, it is the working out of how something figures in the context in which it stands. Heidegger and Gadamer both say that this anticipatory projection of meaning underlies every act of understanding. In sensing a thing we sense it as something. When we hear a sound we don’t, except by an artificial and willed withdrawal of understanding, hear a meaningless, disembodied and abstracted sound, a mere impact upon the ear, but hear it as something carrying meaning – the cry of a baby, the screech of a tyre, the sound of a voice. When we see something, we see it not as a meaningless object to which we only later, and as a subsequent action, attach a meaning, but rather as something that we immediately, and coincident with the seeing, see as something already meaningful. The act of seeing something is an act of 26

recognising it, of understanding it as what it is.

The action of sensing a thing as something presupposes and

requires that there is a pre-understanding of what the thing is prior to the simultaneous acts of sensing and recognising it. In this action we understand the thing, we understand what it is, because we already understand it, and bring that prior understanding with us to the sensing and the recognising. In interpretation we do not, so to speak, throw a ‘signification’ over some naked thing which is present-at-hand, we do not stick a value on it; but when something within-the-world is encountered as such, the thing in question already has an involvement which is disclosed to our understanding of the world, and this involvement 27

is one which gets laid out by the interpretation.

That is to say, when we interpret a speech utterance as meaningful or understand something as something, we do not first perceive them as objects and then clothe them with meaning. The interpretation is grounded in something we have in advance, a pre-understanding. We have a foreconception: ‘An interpretation is never a presuppositionless apprehending of something presented to us’.

28

Meaning gets its structure from these pre-

understandings, which render the thing intelligible. All interpretation therefore operates in the forestructures. The interpretation has already understood what is to be interpreted. 38

Architectural hermeneutics

In our everyday, normal relationship with the world in which we live we make sense of things without having first to grasp them conceptually as objects that stand over against us. Things are simply there; they are not alien and distanced, but are familiar and already understood. Things are, in Heidegger’s phrase, ‘ready-to-hand’. We perceive them ‘circumspectively’, that is, not as objects, but in a practical manner, either as things that have some practical use or else simply as things that are there in the situation in which we operate. We don’t need to ask what things are doing there; they are familiar, at home, in their right place; they do not surprise us; we do not have to explain their presence; they do not elicit from us some special account of their meaning, because they are already, just as they are, meaningful. A hammer is of practical concern to the carpenter, but has no theoretical interest for him, except when something goes wrong, when there is a ‘breakdown’ in this relationship, and the hammer registers as an object or, as Heidegger puts it, it becomes ‘present-at-hand’. Our understanding of things in the lived world is not a matter of knowing objects but of taking them for granted. They are there, in our circumspective perception; they are already understood; our relationship to the world is already hermeneutical through and through; we understand things before they are there as objects for our direct inspection. Not only do we throw forward our pre-understandings in every act of interpretation, says Heidegger, but the pre-understandings themselves have been ‘thrown’ into our present situation from past experience. We are not simply ‘objects’ in the world, objects without a history and as if isolated from the past, but are thrown into the midst of a network of understandings of practices, institutions, conventions, aims, tools, expectations and a multitude of other factors that make us what we are. Nor are our projections merely arbitrary productions of the subjective imagination. The projection derives from experience brought to bear on the clues scattered throughout the situation we are in.

29

Anticipations of

the completed whole are not the positing of subjectivity but emerge from pre30

understandings that inhere within the situation itself.

A typical positivist and empiricist criticism of the hermeneutical circle claims that the circle is vicious in that the ‘validation’ of an interpretation can only be by appeal to other interpretations of the ‘parts’, so that we are 31

caught up in an endless cycle of interpretations.

In this view there must be

some criterion or method that stands apart from the circle of interpretations, something to which we can refer to assess the truth or falsity of our interpretations. In answer to this it can be said that we do not choose to enter the circle of interpretation. We are already in it, in all our thinking and actions, including the act of establishing scientific criteria of validation. As much as it may scandalise empiricists and positivists, the criteria by which we assess 39

Interpretation in architecture

interpretations are nothing more or less than other interpretations. If the adequacy, or felicity, of our interpretation is not apparent to others, then the best we can do is refer them to other interpretations that support and expand our own. This again is the functioning of the hermeneutical circle: we establish an interpretation by appealing to other interpretations as grounding for our own, which operation is an inter-referencing of whole and part. If this does not lead to unassailable certainty, then neither does any other event of understanding, including those that take place within the domain of rigorous scientific method. This lack of final and absolute certainty is the inescapable epistemological predicament that is built into the human condition. It is a 32

condition of our own finitude.

Meaning is not fixed and firm, but is historical; it changes with time and as the situation changes. Understanding is in perpetual flux. Meaning is not an immutable object that stands over against us but is an ever-changing part of an ever-changing situation. It is not an object, but neither is it subjective. It is not something we think first and then throw over onto an external object. It is known from within and can only be so known: we cannot get around in front of meaning, any more than we can get around in front of language. We are embedded in meaning structures, and so cannot view them as objects that can be tested by the criteria of logic. Meaning exists prior to any separation of subject and object. In the interpretive act the Cartesian subject–object dichotomy dissolves. How, then, can we assess the validity of interpretations? A projected interpretation only approximates what the whole might be and is highly fallible. It may well be a wholly inappropriate anticipation. Given that we cannot resolve conflicts between interpretations by an appeal to empirical evidence or to formal logic, since these presuppose a taken-for-granted understanding of what type of evidence and what type of argument can be allowed to enter into the discourse, by what token can we say that a projected interpretation is not merely arbitrary? The only thing that characterises the arbitrariness of inappropriate fore-meanings is that they come to nothing in the working-out. But understanding achieves its full potentiality only when the fore33

meanings it uses are not arbitrary.

The interpreter must not rely on the fore-meanings at once available to him, but must ‘examine explicitly the origin and validity of the fore-meanings present within him … This fundamental requirement must be seen as the radicalization of a procedure that in fact we exercise whenever we 34

understand anything.’ We assess the validity of interpretations by entering 35

into a ‘dialectic of guessing and validation’. The projection must be perceived 40

Architectural hermeneutics

to be open to error and must be constantly recast, which is to say, reinterpreted. This is achieved by way of a dialogic exchange of question and answer, now to be examined as having direct relevance to the dynamics of the process of designing.

The dialogical basis of understanding Gadamer gives a series of metaphors to elucidate the nature of the hermeneutical event.

36

One metaphor likens understanding to the dialectical

process of question and answer that takes place in serious conversation. It is pertinent here because it relates to themes to be developed in the following and also because it gives a picture of the functioning of language that is opposed to the atomic language model. Gadamer cites authentic conversation or dialogue as the quintessential hermeneutic event. He describes a dialogue as, a process of two people understanding each other. Thus it is characteristic of every true conversation that each opens himself to the other person, truly accepts his point of view as worthy of consideration and gets inside the other to such an extent that he understands not a particular individual, but what he says. The thing that has to be grasped is the objective rightness or otherwise of his opinion, so that they can agree with each other on the subject.

37

By dialogue he does not mean idle chatter, but genuine conversation, which he characterises as follows: A fundamental conversation is never one that we want to conduct. Rather, it is generally more correct to say that we fall into conversation, or even that we become involved in it. The way in which one word follows another, with the conversation taking its own turnings and reaching its own conclusion, may well be conducted in some way, but the people conversing are far less the leaders of it than the led. Understanding or its failure is like a process which happens to us.

38

True dialogue is the opposite of argument. Both sides are immersed in the discussion. They are both concerned to enlarge their understanding of a subject. As in the exemplar of all dialogue – Socratic dialectic – it is a process of interrogation and appropriation. It involves a recognition and assimilation of the unfamiliar. In authentic dialogue the 41

Interpretation in architecture

positions of both partners are transformed. A genuine dialogue is a give and take whereby the participants arrive at a new understanding. To think of the dialogue as an encounter between a subject (I) and an other (thou) is to misread a subject–object dichotomy into a situation where it does not apply. In genuine dialogue the participants are caught up in the give and take, in such an involved way that they lose themselves in the conversation. The conversation has internal buoyancy, the to-and-fro 39

movement of a wholly absorbing game. Gadamer makes the equation of the dynamics of dialogue and game-playing explicit when he says, Now I understand that the basic constitution of the game, to be filled with its spirit – the spirit of buoyancy, freedom and the joy of success – and to fulfill him who is playing, is structurally related to the constitution of the dialogue in which language is a reality. When one enters into a dialogue with another person and then is carried further by the dialogue, it is no longer the will of the individual person, holding itself back or exposing itself, that is determinative. Rather, the law of the subject matter is at issue in the dialogue and elicits statement and counterstatement and in the end plays them into each other.

40

The question–answer structure is a form of the hermeneutical circle since the question posits a preliminary way of seeing. The hermeneutical experience is dialogical. The reader enters into a dialogue with a text, commences a to-and-fro give and take that proceeds until understanding is reached. The dialogue enables the text to reveal itself and enables a new understanding. Dialectic proceeds in a way that is entirely different to that of method in the natural sciences. In method the inquirer controls and manipulates; in dialectic the subject matter of the discussion poses questions to which the inquirer responds. The subject matter interrogates the inquirer. The dialectical process is entered into so that the subject matter can reveal itself. Gadamer says that experience has its dialectical fulfilment ‘not in knowing but in an openness 41

for experience, which is itself set in free play by experience’.

In the paradigmatic hermeneutical event, the interpretation of a text, there is reciprocity of questioning: the interpreter asks a question of the text, and at the same time the text addresses a question to the interpreter. Further, to understand the text is to understand the question asked by the text. This is the question–answer structure of all true dialogue, a structure that is radically fundamental in every hermeneutic act. Gadamer claims that, like the hermeneutical circle, the structure of questioning inheres in all experience. He says, 42

Architectural hermeneutics

It is obvious that in all experience the structure of questioning is presupposed. Experience is not to be had without questioning. The realisation that some matter is other than one had first thought presupposes the process of passing through questioning. The openness which lies in the nature of experience is, logically seen, 42

as openness to thus or thus. It has the structure of a question.

The hermeneutical experience begins when the interpreter is sufficiently open to allow the text to question him or her. By this process the horizon of the interpreter fuses with the horizon of the text.

43

The text

‘unhinges’ our prejudices and suggests its own. What is essential in any true dialogue is openness to what the other is saying, so as to test our own understandings and pre-understandings. Genuine conversationalists must be open to the questioning of the other, but this openness is not the ‘open-mindedness’ of the tabula rasa. We ask questions which have a particular orientation, directed by our pre44

understandings.

A question is always directional or intentional in character.

To say that a text questions us is to say that it speaks to us in the manner of a partner in a conversation. Is this a valid analogy? Gadamer acknowledges that the encounter with the text is not the same as the encounter between two people engaged in a conversation, in that the interpreter projectively supplies the meanings of the text. The text obviously does not in any literal sense speak and ask questions, and cannot even be said to speak for the author; but the concept of the text asking questions has validity in that in the act of its interpretation there is a communication, a fusion of horizons, in a common sphere of meaning. The disclosure of new understandings of a subject matter that is common to the text and the interpreter makes the hermeneutic situation the equivalent of the transmission of meanings that takes place in a dialogue conducted by two people. The dialogue with the text is like a living conversation ‘in that it is the 45

common object that unites the partners, the text and the interpreter’.

In the

same way that a creative discourse is not originated or imagined by the interpreter but has its own impetus, takes its own course and leads the participants, so the interpreter does not guide the conversation with a text 46

but is rather guided through the subject matter.

Inquiry by way of question and answer characterises the human and hermeneutic sciences. It is their distinctive mark just as the use of rigorous method is the distinctive mark of the natural sciences. The dialogic inquiry by means of question and answer is not a method: ‘There is no method of learning to question, of saying what is questionable’.

47

Genuine questions

are not something we think up nor something we do. On the contrary, they occur to us, they happen, they arise of their own accord. 43

Interpretation in architecture

There is no method for making up questions, but on the other hand they can be prevented from arising. They only occur to us if we allow them to arise and if the conditions are conducive to their appearance and acceptance. The conditions are conducive when the interpreter is given over to the dialogue, as happens when we are engrossed in a stimulating conversation. In this situation I do not choose my words with care; I do not plan what I am about to say, but speak spontaneously. I hear my own words as I utter them and at the same time as my listener hears them, and they can be as disclosive to me as they are to the other. The conversation transcends the separation of subject and object. I interpret the other speaker’s questions and objections in ways unintended when uttered. The conversation has a life of its own, leading the speakers into areas that are new to them, and going beyond their initial intentions and interests. We are caught up in conversation; questions arise effortlessly from the conversation itself, generated by its internal dynamics.

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We sustain conversations; we do not create them, even if they draw upon our total interpretive skills and experience.

The universality of the hermeneutic circle Hermeneutical philosophy claims that the hermeneutical process outlined in the preceding is primordial and universal. It operates not only in the understanding of language and texts, but in every act of understanding. Processes of understanding are radically fundamental to all human perception, thought and action. The hermeneutical process is more basic than and prior to the use of logic, formal languages and scientific method, and therefore forms the foundation for all rationality. The hermeneutical circle applies to one’s whole life, which is an ongoing process of interpreting experiences.

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Our interpretation of

experiences modifies our perception of the past and our anticipations of the future; and our understanding of the past and the future forms the context in which we interpret experiences. Understanding and experience are in constant interaction. Our self-understanding affects our understanding of all other things. All understanding is self-understanding. In this sense hermeneutics is fundamental to our mode of being. Understanding is not one of our activities in the world, but is basic to everything we do and are: ‘Understanding is the original character of the being of human life itself’.

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The hermeneutical structure acts in every kind of

experience gathering and in every mode of cognitive acquisition, including the acquisition of language. It operates in all exposition and in all learning. The hermeneutic circle that operates in the understanding of a text is a particular instance of a general state of affairs. 44

Architectural hermeneutics

The operation of the hermeneutical circle is not the employment of a method. It is not something we can choose to use or not, in the manner of a tool. It is, rather, embedded in all thought and in all action. To elucidate the workings of this structure is not to formulate a newfound procedure as an alternative to others; it is not to propose a non-mathematically based model in contrast to models based on the paradigms of mathematics and formal language. It is, rather, simply to indicate what is operating in every act of understanding, operating at such a basic and radical level that it cannot be dispensed with, cannot be rejected or accepted. To speak of choosing it as a method is as meaningless as to speak of the acceptance or rejection of language.

Designing and the hermeneutical circle After this long excursion, it is time to return and apply these findings to the design process. Even a cursory examination of the protocol studies of Donald Schön indicates that the design process he describes works according to the dynamics of the hermeneutical circle, proceeding by way of a dialogic exchange with the design situation.

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Schön speaks of design as ‘reflection-in-action’, which is ‘a reflective conversation with the situation’: ‘The principle is that you work simultaneously from the unit and from the total and then go in cycles – back and forth, back and forth …’ We ‘begin with a discipline, even if it is arbitrary’, which, in hermeneutical terms, is the projection of a pre-understanding. This projected discipline, says Schön, is a ‘what if’ to be adopted in order to discover its consequences, and can always ‘be broken open later’. The designer thus begins the design task by shaping the situation in accordance with an initial appreciation. The situation then ‘talks back’ and the designer responds to the situation’s back talk by reflecting-in-action on the construction of the problem, the strategies of action, or the model of the phenomena. The process then develops in a circle – ‘back and forth, back and forth’. Each move draws out the implications of earlier moves, seen as having consequences that are described and evaluated in terms drawn from one or more design domains, and having implications binding on later moves, creating new problems to be described and solved. In this way the designer spins out ‘a web of moves, consequences, implications, appreciations and further 52

moves’.

What Schön describes here is a clear and straightforward account of the working of the hermeneutical circle as summarised by Bernstein: ‘a continuous dialectical tacking between local detail and global structures … a sort of intellectual perpetual motion’.

53

Designers proceed by way of a 45

Interpretation in architecture

continuing inter-referencing of a projected whole and the particulars that make up the design situation; they project the meaning of the whole and work out the implications of this projection by referring it back to the individual parts, 54

which are then reinterpreted. Understanding arises by a process of constant revisions. In the design process we often do not fully know what the goal is until we have reached it.

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Nevertheless, the obscurity of the goal does not

block our design activity. Even though initially we don’t know precisely what we are striving to achieve, particulars of the design situation give us clues to the unknown,

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and we have some sort of vague preconception of what the

final outcome will be. A peculiarity of the site, an unusual requirement of the client or some other detail in the brief triggers the projection of a provisional image of the completed scheme. The projection of this first image initiates the working of the hermeneutical circle, and the design process now continues by the back-andforth interplay between the parts and the whole. Interpretations of the parts modify the projection, which in turn plays back to modify the interpretations of the parts. This process is fluid, repetitive and continuous. It furnishes a kaleidoscope of ever-changing reflections, revisions, false starts and backtracking, leading eventually to a clarification of the projection.

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This is an interaction of past, present and future understandings. Our present understanding, thrown from our past experience, throws forward to adumbrate the artefact in its future completion. This provisional projection then throws back to refashion our present understanding, which in turn throws back to refashion our understanding of our past experience … and so the cycle continues. The efficacy of the process depends on keeping it moving. It also depends on an openness that allows for the intrusion of rival projections. Every projection contains the potentiality of itself projecting a new design. Alternate projections can develop side by side until they coalesce or one drops out of the contest. Designing is grounded in understanding and is nothing other than the explication of what has already been understood. This does not mean, however, that the design is predetermined, or that the process must take a preordained sequence of logical steps, nor that there is a pre-established 58

result – the answer to the ‘problem’

– and prescribed methodological steps

to that result. The explication of what is already understood only unfolds when the process is fluid and retroactive. The projected task completion must be allowed to reflect back into the design situation and affect the interpretation of particulars. The hermeneutic act of designing follows a dialectical structure of 59

question and answer. The designer projects an anticipated completion of the 46

Architectural hermeneutics

work, and then enters into a dialogue with it, questioning its validity in the light of the particular factors that make up the design situation. The designer then allows the design situation to ask questions in its turn. The answers given by the situation and the questions it raises evoke further answers and questions, and the design proceeds by a back-and-forth, to-and-fro movement of query 60

and response.

If the design process is a dialogical cycle of question and answer, who or what does the design situation question? It questions all the prejudgements, pre-understandings, values and attitudes that the designer brings to the design situation, preconceptions that are taken for granted since 61

they are for the greater part unconscious. The question is referred back to the designer’s own forestructures of understanding. When designing, designers are continually being questioned. They can facilitate that process by laying themselves open to the questions, leaving themselves vulnerable, at risk, by taking the questions as a probing of their prejudgements; or they can proceed in a one-sided manner, asking questions of the situation, but protecting their pre-established biases by not allowing themselves to be questioned in return. In the former case there is a revelatory disclosure of unconscious mind sets, and this disclosure renders the design process not only a dis-covery (an uncovering) of the artefact as it reveals itself in the process of discourse (in the manner in which insights reveal themselves to participants in a conversation), but it is also self-revelatory, a process of selfdiscovery or of edification.

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Further, the design situation is able to question the designer because we can engage in dialogue with things as well as people.

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The

project and the design situation are self-representing and function in the manner of texts, which engage readers and question them. The designer enters into dialogue with the design project as with an unfamiliar and alien text, allowing it to question pre-understandings. Designers speak for the design situation, channeling back to 64

themselves the questions it asks. The questions posed by the situation, however, are not static and asked once for all but change as the designerinterpreter’s understanding of the situation changes. This rules out the notion of any ‘objective’ analysis of the constitutive factors in a design situation. Not only do we select those ‘objects’ in accordance with our interpretive preconceptions, but they are what we understand them to be at a particular moment in an ongoing process of change. They have no abiding presence. In the manner of a spirited conversation, which carries the speakers along, the design situation carries the designer in its flow. Good conversation absorbs the speakers; so likewise the action of designing, when it is proceeding as it should, absorbs the designer. Designers are truly designing when they are so involved in the task that they are not aware that 47

Interpretation in architecture

they are designing, or that the design situation is an object outside themselves. There is no end point in the hermeneutical circle; and neither is there a starting point. We do not come into a design situation without presuppositions. There is a minimal pre-knowledge necessary for understanding, without which the designer cannot begin to design. Descartes’ ideal of a prejudiceless transparency of mind is unattainable. We bring presuppositions regarding the design situation both as a whole and in its parts by way of our experience, both our general life-experience and our more specific experience as designers. The most inexperienced design student, untrained in design, has nevertheless been exposed from birth to the products of design, and therefore comes to the design situation with inbuilt presuppositions. It is fruitless for the design tutor to attempt to free the student’s mind of pre-understanding. Descartes’ tabula rasa is a chimera. There is no such thing as an open mind if this means a mind without prejudice. The mind, however, can be open to the questions raised by the design situation, open to the questions that threaten inappropriate presuppositions. To say that we bring prejudicial presuppositions to a task is not to say that those presuppositions cannot be made explicit or cannot be challenged, changed or abandoned. This is precisely the nature of the hermeneutical process of question and answer when it is operating in an open and unrestrained manner. The presuppositions of the designer, projected as an anticipation of wholeness, are in a perpetual state of interrogation, review, revision or rejection. If design educators recognise that presuppositions are ineradicable, stem from the experience that underpins all understanding, and are the base from which the design image is projected, they will abandon attempts to eradicate prejudice in students, but will introduce them to a design dialectic, in which those presuppositions and pre-understandings are continually brought into question and are revised, expanded or rejected as responses to that questioning. We believe that this, rather than any model based on logical sequences of operations, is the fitting and appropriate foundation of a design education.

Logical versus dialogical design We have, then, two opposed concepts of language as metaphors for the design process. On the one hand there is the model of formalised language, the language of primary units that are combined according to the rules of logic to form meaningful structures; and on the other hand there is the metaphor 48

Architectural hermeneutics

of the language of conversation and dialogue, which is the language of interpretation.

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The two notions of language are antithetical and mutually exclusive. Habermas asserts that the unequivocal character of formalised languages is purchased at the cost of any possibility of dialogue. Formal calculi, he says, have a monadological structure, one that excludes conversation; they permit implications, but not communications; they replace dialogue with a mere exchange of information.

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Gadamer says that, ‘the

logic of the human sciences … is the logic of the question’,

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which means

that it is dialogical rather than propositional. Bruns expands this to show that we only understand something when it is open to questioning. We cannot understand what is taken as settled and fixed. To be understood it must be restored to the questioning that gives it its sense.

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Propositional language

shuts off questioning; it stops the interrogative flow; it expunges the ambiguities that open up new questions. When a statement is considered definitive, it closes off any further questioning, for it is the definitive answer to whatever question was originally asked, so that no further question need be asked. In determinate, formalised language experience comes to a stand, assumes a fixed state, and expresses itself in assertions. On the other hand, hermeneutics reminds us that every assertion is the answer to a question, and it is the task of the human (that is to say, hermeneutical) sciences to recall the questions that scientific propositions have forgotten, and to recall the process of conversation whence the proposition arose before it solidified into stasis. In opposition to the propositional affirmations of the natural sciences, the human sciences affirm ‘the primacy of process over state and of question 69

over statement’.

Whereas formal language is one at the disposal of the user, the language of authentic dialogue does not belong to the speakers, but rather possesses and guides them. Its function is not instrumental, but disclosive; it reveals understanding from within itself, and thereby serves as a medium that transmits understanding between the speakers. We do not use language in a conversation as a set of pre-given atomic meanings accompanied by a set of rules for their combination. On the contrary, as we have seen, the meaning of words depends on the situation in which they are used, and the logic of language is not the logician’s logic but the logic of question and answer. The language used in conversation cannot be reduced to logically formalisable rulegrammars. If, as we have proposed, the design process is one of question and answer, then we can begin to see the dangers inherent in the use of models of formal language to describe and control it. By its very structure formal language excludes and precludes the operation of a dialogical exchange. The formal language model presupposes a separation of subject 49

Interpretation in architecture

and object, and thereby conceals the dialectical nature of understanding. It obviates the engrossed involvement in which the subject and the object merge, an involvement that is the mark of genuine dialogue and the mark of genuine design activity. The formal model purchases finality at the price of holding open possibilities. In dialogue finality is forever suspended; the presuppositions of the participants are under continual review. The dialogical and logical approaches to designing are irreconcilable. Designing, being a hermeneutical enterprise, does not employ inductive logic. It does not build generalisations from particulars in a linear and incremental manner, but predicts a generalisation, the whole, and then works back and forth between that projected generalisation and the particulars. In contrast to the deductive-nomological and inductive methods of explanation, which proceed by way of conclusions logically drawn from premises, the design process has no premises or conclusions. The whole and the parts of the interpretive situation are used neither deductively nor inductively, but as entities that confer understanding, as speakers in a dialogical oscillation between interpretation and assessment. It starts with no categorically definite question, problem, explanandum or conclusion; nor, equally, does it start from premises. The project – the perfected whole which is aimed for – only becomes more definite and determinate as the particularities of the situation become clearer; and these, in turn, are only understood with greater clarity as the whole is disclosed. In retrospect, both the ‘conclusion’ and the ‘premises’ are seen to have been incoherent at the 70

beginning of the interpretive process.

Designing is primarily an interpretative activity, one that pertains to understanding a design situation rather than to having knowledge of formulae, theorems and algorithms. Designing is a hermeneutical rather than an epistemological event. In the hermeneutical event application is interwoven with and inseparable from interpretation and understanding; in the epistemological event, knowledge and its application are separate and sequential: knowledge is prior to its application. The answers to the questions arising in the situation are known in advance. They do not vary according to 71

peculiar exigencies or contingencies.

In the epistemological schema, theory

precedes practice. In the hermeneutical event, theory cannot be divorced from practice. The theory, such as it is, only comes into consciousness, is only clarified or disclosed in the process of its application. Theory and practice coalesce in the act of interpretation; general principles come to be understood 72

in the unfolding of their application in the event.

The non-logical nature of the design process is shown in that, as was said previously, a single factor in the design situation can trigger the whole design process. Something in a part evokes a preconception of the whole. Explanations of such ‘leaps’ cannot be encompassed by logic; but 50

Architectural hermeneutics

they are comfortably accommodated within the hermeneutic horizon, and without resort to notions of intuition, creativity and the other processes supposedly hidden beyond scrutiny in the ‘black box’ of subjectivity. Such leaps in the design process can be explicitly understood in terms of the situation in which they occur, their relation to the parts and whole within a field 73

of interactions.

The hermeneutical nature of the design event has nothing in common with methodological analysis. A question in a dialogical situation projects a preliminary and provisional way of seeing that has its own horizon of expectations, but this way of seeing is called into question and is subject to change when the question is answered. Analysis and methodical questioning, by contrast, operate within a structure of inflexible presuppositions that are not called into question by the answer. In the methodological context the answer to the hypothetical question is always expected to lie within the framework of the methodologically structured question itself, so that the answer does not question either the original question or the person who asked it. Hence there is no possibility of new aspects of the question being revealed 74

or a transformation of the questioner’s earlier understanding.

Similarly, hermeneutic projection in the design process has nothing in common with the formation of a scientific hypothesis, nor is dialogical questioning in any way akin to the processes of verification or falsification of a hypothesis. The hypothesis formulates a specific anticipation, which is accepted or rejected in total on the evidence of testing procedures, that is, is answered with a simple yes or no that in no way alters the content or nature of the question the hypothesis poses. The hermeneutical anticipation, by contrast, feeds back into the particularities of the situation, and is either ‘fulfilled’ or ‘disappointed’; if fulfilled it enriches the particularities, which then play back to enrich the anticipations; and if disappointed it likewise places the particularities in a new light, opening up new expectations and triggering further projections. In either case there is the discovery of something that had existed hidden in the situation all along and was implied, but unnoticed, in the old, discredited expectation.

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Unlike a hypothesis, which is discrete and

strictly defined, every horizon of expectation potentially contains within itself other horizons, which are revealed when the original expectation collapses. Gadamer posits that the disappointment of an anticipation is really a reversal of consciousness, a self-confrontation, which not only reveals our delusive opinions, but also the ways in which we have unconsciously been proceeding, thus bringing about a restructuring of understanding. Logic-based models are powerless to comprehend (in both senses) the ‘irrational’, contradictory and confused nature of much of the designer’s activities. These aspects of the design process are outside the limits of logicbased models. The same design behaviour ‘makes sense’, however, when 51

Interpretation in architecture

we approach it from the viewpoint not of logical knowledge but of understanding. We can make sense of design activities when we understand why the designer uses them, even when they are not logical, and this understanding arises when we locate design activities within the field of the design situation and the meanings that situation has for the designer. Making sense of the meanings of design actions and a design situation can only proceed by way of reference to the circle of interpretation. Design actions and design situations make up a ‘text’ that can be read. This ‘reading’, however, can only be explained by reference to other readings that have reference to a projected whole and not to some external criterion. No argument based solely on logic is relevant in this never-ending play of interpretive readings. All questions are prejudicial since they isolate out one thing rather than another to be answered; but whereas the limitations of a scientific model close the view to new developments, the question, precisely because it is limited, opens up views. As Gadamer says, The openness of the question is not boundless. It is limited by the horizon of the question. A question which lacks this is, so to speak, floating. It becomes a question only when the fluid indeterminacy of the direction in which it is pointing is overcome by a specific alternative being presented. In other words, the question has to be asked. The asking of it implies openness, but also limitation. It implies the explicit establishing of presuppositions, in terms of which can be seen what still remains open.

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Whereas the use of logical methods is intended to arrive at a ‘solution’ of a design ‘problem’, designing that proceeds by way of question and answer can have no end. There is no ‘correct’ answer like that arrived at by following a prescribed sequence of mathematical or logical steps. The answers given to a question open up further questions for those who are open and receptive to questioning. In the design process the answer to a question only opens up further questions, in a never-ending series. The end of the process is always imposed from outside the process, not from any finality that is found in the process itself. Whatever the nature of the external constraints that force an end to the ongoing process, every designer knows that any design could always be taken further. The design process is an uncovering of tacit understanding,

77

which is not something fixed, crystalline or frozen. It is processual, fluid, in incessant flux. It cannot, therefore, be brought to the surface in the manner of an archaeological find – some lifeless object – dredged up from the depths of the mind. Understanding is always in process, and this process is unending. 52

Architectural hermeneutics

It can never reach finality or completion. We never reach a point where it can be said, ‘Disclosure is complete’, because there is always the possibility of new understandings. Understanding plays back to elicit new responses from the past; and plays forward to elicit new responses from the future. The design event is an inexhaustibly prolific and productive matrix, because it is a matrix that is ever reforming itself in conformity with its product.

Atomic tokens and design The meaning of a word depends on its context and its relation to other words used within a situation; the meaning of a thing depends on a network of other meanings. We cannot derive meaning from a single word or thing taken in isolation; meanings are founded in relationships and contrasts. Likewise the single elements, the atomic ‘tokens’ that are combined according to grammatical rules, have no meaning in themselves and isolated from a context. The introduction of new concepts into a semantic field alters the boundaries of the other concepts in that field. A formal language – a rule-bound and artificial language made up of primary tokens – no more gives a true account of the language of design than it does of ordinary spoken language. The language of design, like normal spoken language, does not proceed according to rules, nor do we learn it by way of rules. The design world, like the world at large, does not consist of a set of atomic facts whose relationship can be expressed in logical propositions. We do not experience either of these worlds as a set of objective facts. ‘Facts’ interrelate with and interpenetrate other ‘facts’; they cannot be considered in isolation, nor are they separable. We have always already interpreted ‘facts’ in the context of human needs, expectations, preoccupations, preconceptions and intimations. As soon as we make a ‘fact’ explicit, isolate it and rip it from context, we have lost its richness of meaning. To give a single and precise meaning to the ‘fact’ is to emasculate it. Every fact is polysemic. Herein lies the basis for the hermeneutic critique of the atomistic notion of language and design. We cannot understand the meanings of isolated elements such as words in a sentence or design tokens in a design situation unless we have a prior knowledge of the whole context within which the elements occur; we cannot substitute a stepwise, algorithmic procedure for any practice involving interpretation, since our choice of elements is dictated by our understanding of the practice. The practice is not ‘legitimised’ by a ‘rational reconstruction’ of the elements. We cannot avoid the circle of understanding; we cannot grasp the parts, the steps, of a process such as designing unless we know beforehand how the whole thing works, and we 78

cannot get this holistic grasp until we understand the parts.

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Interpretation in architecture

To view the word or the design element as an atomic unit is to view it as an object, which presupposes a subject. But a word only has meaning in a context of interpretation, and, as Heidegger and Gadamer have insisted, the act of interpretation dissolves the subject–object dichotomy. We do not stand back and apart from words as we use them in a situation. We are involved with them and with the situation. We do not possess words nor use them in the manner of tools, things to be used and manipulated, but we are the words we use. Language possesses us. We do not stand over against language, but are embedded in it. So also, in the design process, we do not stand over against the entities that make up the design situation and manipulate them to form larger entities. If there is any sense at all in speaking about design ‘elements’, there can be none in speaking about their manipulation. We do not control the various elements that enter into the design event. Quite on the contrary, they have meaning and relevance in that situation because we are caught up in the process, because they reveal possibilities and thus lead us by a process of disclosure. To regard design tokens as objects to be manipulated and controlled is to accept the instrumental view of language, which sees language as a tool, as something external to the subject, something to be used. Such a view immobilises the spontaneous play of dialogical exchange that is the hallmark of the design process; it prevents the disclosive function of language, in which language reveals new understandings from and of itself. It blocks the free flow of interpretation. The atomistic language model casts potentialities of understanding in pre-established molds. It formulates possibilities of understanding in

advance and once and for all. It pre-defines the limits of the dialogical process and thereby constrains its free movement and blocks its disclosive function. Whereas hermeneutical designing proceeds within a network of shifting relationships, formal logic fixes this state of flux in static formulae. The fluidity of design is captured, as if by a camera, in algorithmic ‘stills’. Codified knowledge brings pre-known and pre-scribed answers to the design situation. Knowing the answers in advance, questions are redundant. Knowing excludes questioning. Those who know need not listen; they have the game sewn up. Pre-scribed decisions keep the situation silent. The atomistic model renders the hermeneutical circle vicious. It preestablishes projected meanings so that only what has been previously selected as knowable can become known, thus blocking the acquisition of new knowledge or understanding. The algorithmic formula encapsulates knowledge of what has gone before; its use prescribes what is to follow; so that a petrifaction of the past becomes the paradigm for present action. Presuppositions are necessarily brought to every interpretive event; but 54

Architectural hermeneutics

whereas the presuppositions of method have frozen understanding in advance, the hermeneutical circle allows for an ongoing progression of understandings. The atomistic language model, furthermore, is an exercise in exclusion. The model narrowly defines design in terms of its own preoccupations. It deals with only a tiny portion of what goes on in a design situation and excludes all else. To define design as the manipulation of formal elements is to exclude the greater part of design, the part relating to its physical and human context. The model does not define the design process as a whole but, at best, one of its ancillary activities. To answer that the manipulation of tokens is merely an exemplary process that could be extended by analogy to cover every aspect of designing is to enter into an infinite regress like the one Wittgenstein describes for rules, in which the results derived by the manipulation of fragmentary aspects of the design situation must then be combined by meta-rules of manipulation to form wholes which in turn need a new set of rules … and so on, endlessly. The term ‘exclusive’ has two senses: excluding the other, and uniqueness. The atomic language model of design is exclusive in both senses. It excludes whatever is not contained within its definition of design; and it can be taken by the unwary to be the design process. This is to regard the use of a design grammar as design itself, as if we were to regard grammar as the operative principle in writing or speaking. An algorithm, whether or not it makes explicit use of linguistic models, selects out the commonalities of different design situations. It works in the domain of universals, of what is shared by every member of a class. Such is the nature of scientific laws. But in the realm of design, as in the human sciences, it is precisely what is distinctive, particular, unique, unrepeatable and idiosyncratic that is important. Difference, not sameness, is the proper focus of design study. It is not what a design situation has in common with all others that most matters, but what distinguishes it as different; and so likewise it is difference in a particular situation rather than conformity that matters most in the playing out of a sequence of design operations.

Conclusion If, as has been argued here, the design process belongs to the domain of dialogical exchange, is firmly embedded in a human situation, and is a focal nexus within a network of forestructures of understanding, then it is to be understood not in terms of a language of precise logic that manipulates atomic tokens in an exact sign system, as in computational models of design, but rather in terms of the language of everyday conversation. Designing is not computational, but hermeneutical. 55

Chapter 2

Playing by the rules

Figure captions (clockwise from top left ) 1

Design for Edinburgh Cowgate reconstruction by Robert Small

2–5

Design work by students of Stephen Cairns, Mark Dorrian, Adrian Hawker, Fiona McLachlan, Remo Pedreschi and Dorian Wiszniewski

6

Design for Edinburgh Cowgate reconstruction by Tessa Baird

7

Symbols of scrutiny and stress in the studio

8

Southbridge redevelopment by Donna Walker and Anne Laure Carruth

Chapter 2

Playing by the rules

Scientific thinking distinguishes theoretical knowledge (episteme) and 1

technical or practical knowledge (techne). Theoretical knowledge is of general laws formulated in mathematical or logical language; and technical knowledge concerns the application of these general laws for the purpose of attaining some practical end. Theory in this context is seen as a compendium of the general laws that are explanatory of an observed phenomenon; and practice is the application of these pre-given laws, codified as a sequential method. General theoretical laws translate into rules of procedure. Applying these concepts to designing, theoretical design knowledge is the knowledge of the design process formulated in design rules, grammars and formulae; and design practice is the methodical and step-by-step application of these formulations in order to produce a design. The conventional assumption is that theory precedes practice: first we know the general laws governing the behaviour of objects; and then we utilise these laws to manipulate and control them. It is basic to this assumption that laws have a universal validity and function in the same manner in every instance of their application. This accords with the orthodox epistemological tradition, which, from Plato through Descartes to logical positivism, insists that only knowledge of unchanging laws or principles is true and valid knowledge. Knowledge cannot be of what changes, but only of the unchanging laws that govern change. Knowledge of what changes would itself be subject to change and thus to constant modification or repudiation; it would be merely transitory, uncertain and relative; it would, as Plato says, be mere 2

opinion or belief, with each person his or own judge of what is true. True knowledge, by contrast, is constant in its application. Epistemic laws are 59

Interpretation in architecture

immutable, whatever the particularities of the situation in which they are applied. Technical knowledge, therefore, is the application of general laws that are uniform and unchanging, regardless of when and where they come into force. Scientific laws are thus deemed to have a general validity which is independent of local conditions, just as the law of gravity holds in precisely the same way everywhere and at all times, however varied the circumstances of its occurrence. When the laws of science are applied to practical purposes, they do not vary from one occasion to the next. It follows that epistemic laws, being unaffected by particular or contingent vagaries, can be learned and taught in the abstract, and with no necessary reference to individual cases of application.

3

If this view were to be strictly enforced in design education, it would follow that students would first learn design theory, consisting of sets of binding, exceptionless, unchanging and timeless principles, preferably expressed in mathematical or quasi-mathematical formulae, which they would then apply in exactly the same way in each design exercise. The steps in the process would be programmed in advance, so that there would remain nothing for the designer to do but mechanically follow the pre-ordained procedures laid down in the method. In the following it will be argued that even if these notions of general laws and their application have been successful in the natural sciences, they are flawed when applied to designing, and far from aiding the design process can be disruptive and disabling. The argument is based on Gadamer’s critique of concepts of the 4

application of laws. In the light of his findings, we assert that design theories claiming universality of application misread the nature of practical design knowledge and misrepresent the manner in which design rules relate to design practice.

Juridical understanding Gadamer cites juridical understanding to demonstrate that prescribed laws do not necessarily remain unchanged in the varying circumstances of their 5

application. According to the traditional epistemological view, legal statutes are to be thought of as a set of pre-given immutables that are applied in the same way in every particular legal case, in the same way in which design algorithms can be applied in every design situation regardless of its particularities. The good judge, however, does not simply take a pre-given law and ‘apply’ it in the same way in all circumstances, but interprets it in the 60

Playing by the rules

light of precedents and as it pertains to each unique case. The judge upholds the spirit (or purpose) of the law by acting in its light but applying it differently in various concrete situations. The judge’s understanding of the law involves its application and its modification in accordance with contingent circumstances. The judge’s interpretation of the law is neither objective nor subjective, since there is a reciprocal relationship between the law and the way the judge understands it in its application. Not only does the meaning of the law change in its application, but so also does the understanding of the judge. Judges apply their understanding to the law, but at the same time they apply the law to their own understanding, because they are concerned to understand the particular cases they are judging in the light of the law and 6

not by way of their own understanding alone.

To show that the law is only understood in its application, Gadamer cites Aristotle’s concept of equity (epieikeia), the correction or accommodation of the law. Aristotle says that no law has a straightforward and clearcut meaning but has a certain internal tension in that it can be applied in a number of ways; it contains a number of possibilities of action as it relates to specific cases. There is a tension between the sense of the legal text as it is written and its meaning arrived at in the particular moment of its interpretation within the context of particular legal situations, which are continually varied and new. This means that the text of the law must be understood in a new way each time it is applied. Equity is not best served by sticking to the letter of the law, but by interpreting it in terms of its spirit (or intent). This involves a process of improving and completing the law, with the implication that the law is not perfect in itself, but only finds its completion and perfection in its application. A law is always general and cannot include within its compass all the possible complexities to be found in individual cases. In this sense a law is always insufficient, and the field of our actions is imperfect when compared with the ideal order envisioned by law. Codified law does not in itself, therefore, fulfil the conditions of finding justice. Equity functions to perfect the codified law. Further, each concrete application of the law carries with it the implication that it is not unjust to tolerate a certain elasticity in its interpretation.

7

Since the text of the law must be understood in a new way each time it is applied, the laws governing the enactment of equity can never be 8

enacted. The assessment of what is a correct judgement cannot be determined in advance or apart from the particular situation, because the situation itself partly determines what is the correct judgement. For this 9

reason correct action or correct decision cannot be definitively codified.

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The concept of ethical knowledge These ideas are further developed in Gadamer’s review of Aristotle’s concept of ‘ethical knowledge’ (phronesis), which highlights the notion that understanding and application are coincident and demonstrates that the application of pre-given rules involves a type of knowledge that is unlike epistemic knowledge.

10

Aristotle puts forward his ideas on phronesis as a counter to Plato’s assertion that virtue is a matter of knowledge, so that virtuous action is the application of rules of virtuous behaviour that are known by the virtuous man before he is called upon to act. The virtuous man, in Plato’s view, has learned the rules of correct action and thus knows what to do in every situation. He simply applies the known rules. Virtuous action is thus analogous to the skilful action of the craftsman who fashions an artefact; it is the application of universally valid rules to a prescribed end. The particularities of the unique event play no part in the application of the given rules. Aristotle protests that the application of general ethical principles to particular circumstances depends on the exercise of moral judgement, and judgement is not itself governed by general rules. It is, rather, a response to the unique peculiarities of the situation. Judgement is not something that can be conveyed by way of some kind of formal doctrine; it cannot be embodied in prescriptive formulae; it cannot be learned in advance, but can only be learned by and in practice, in the very process of applying the general rules that have been previously learned. We learn correct judgement by a training in the performance of correct actions. We become just by doing just actions.

11

‘The decision lies with perception’,

12

that is, in ‘perceiving’ or

understanding the particularities of a situation. We do not understand the point of moral rules, we do not understand what they are for, unless and until we interpret them by applying them in a particular situation. Virtuous behaviour is thus an application of general rules in a manner unlike that described by Plato and orthodox epistemology. Knowledge of how to act virtuously, phronesis, differs from epistemic knowledge. It is not knowledge of immutable rules, but knowledge of rules that change in their application; and therefore it is not an unchanging knowledge, but one that is modified each time it is brought into action. Ethical knowledge is modified in each particular instance of its application because we have an understanding and tolerance of the motives of others and can therefore act for their sakes.

13

It is a knowledge that involves choice; and it is never mere knowledge, but is knowledge revealing itself in action and in involvement, so that the idea of what is ethically right ‘cannot be fully determined independently of the situation that demands what is right from me’.

14

Ethical principles, or our

ethical prejudices, cannot be uniformly applied in each and every situation 62

Playing by the rules

and remain ethical. They retain their right to be termed ethical to the extent that they are modified to meet the requirements of the unique situation. That is, they cannot be divorced from practical application and are acquired through application. Plato says that people become good by learning the rules governing virtuous action and can forget those rules. Aristotle, by contrast, claims that people cannot be taught how to be good; and if they are good, this is a knowledge that will never be forgotten, since ‘we are always already in the situation of having to act … and hence must already possess and be able to apply moral knowledge’.

15

Although we know in advance the rules of

conduct that tell us what is right and wrong, we do not have prior knowledge of how the rules are to be applied when we are called upon to act. This knowledge is ‘worked out’ in the very event of acting. This means that the laws embodied in statutes are only valid as schemata.

16

The coincidence of interpretation, understanding and application The judge’s knowledge of how to apply the law equitably and the virtuous person’s knowledge of how to act virtuously are matters of judgement, which is to say matters of interpretation and understanding. Does this mean that the judge and the phronimos first interpret and understand the law or rules of conduct and then apply them in the light of that understanding or that the ability to apply the law equitably or to act virtuously is simply a matter of interpreting the statutes or rules of conduct and logically deducing from them the correct course of action? In other words, does their application not simply follow on from an understanding that derives from an interpretation by way of logical reasoning? Gadamer precludes these readings by indicating that understanding, interpretation and application are not three distinct moments in the hermeneutical event, but are inseparably interrelated and coincident.

17

‘Application is neither a subsequent nor a merely occasional part of the phenomenon of understanding, but codetermines it as a whole from the beginning.’

18

That is, application does not come after understanding and

interpretation. They comprise one unified process; we do not first interpret, then understand, and finally apply what we have understood. Every event of understanding involves interpretation, and interpretation always involves application. Interpretation is realised in application. The interpreter only understands the text when s/he applies it. Interpretation is always the explicit form of understanding; and interpretation and understanding only occur in 19

the action of application.

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Interpretation in architecture

The meaning of applications that is involved in all forms of understanding is now clear. It is not the subsequent applying to a concrete case of a given universal that we understand first by itself, but it is the actual understanding of the universal itself that the given text constitutes for us. Understanding proves to be a kind of effect and knows itself as such.

20

Expanding this to everyday experience in the world, all authentic understanding and interpretation are realised in application. When we read a text the very process of the play of reading and interpretation forces us to apply the meaning through the need to interpret it, which is an immediate application of the meaning of the text … The interpretation itself is the concrete, specific application of the text to our own lives.

21

Even our recognition of a sensible object as what it is and not something else depends on this coincidence of interpretation, understanding and application. The object exists in a tension between what it is in itself and the changing situation in which we interpret and understand it; and we interpret and understand it just as we do a law or a text or anything else that requires interpretation, by applying its meaning to the life-situation in which we find ourselves – and without such an application there can be no meaningful interpretation or understanding. So likewise, the interpretation and understanding of the ‘texts’ of our lives – the rules of conduct and experience we bring to every situation – take place in the application of those rules and our experience in the succession of situations we live through. As Gadamer says, application is not a calibration of some generality given in advance in order to unravel afterwards a particular situation. In interpretation the interpreter does not try to apply a general criterion to a particular case; but is interested in the fundamentally original significance of 22

the case.

These notions are relevant to designing in that even a superficial examination of what designers do in the lived world of everyday design experience shows that they do not employ design rules in the same way in every design situation, but proceed in a manner which is directly analogous to that of the judge or the phronimos in that they continually exercise judgement in their design decisions and actions, interpreting the myriad factors which constitute the total design environment, and only coming to 23

understand the rules they apply by applying them.

For the greater part, designing does not proceed by the application of epistemic design rules, those which fit the criteria of science in remaining 64

Playing by the rules

unchanged in every event of their application, but rather by practical design rules, which operate in the manner of legal statutes and rules of conduct which 24

change when they are applied. The former are fixed absolutes; the latter are fluid expedients.

Design rules and the rules of the game These considerations are further elucidated by Gadamer’s treatment of the way in which the rules of a game relate to its playing.

25

It would not be

possible to play a game if it had no rules; yet the rules only take actual shape when the game is played; and outside the particular specific instance of its playing neither the game nor its rules have concrete shape or existence. The rules provide a framework for the playing of the game and determine the range of appropriate actions the players can take, but they do not account for the way the game is played or the way it turns out each time it is played. Like the game itself, the rules only really exist in the actual playing of the game. The game is not the rules but its playing. In this sense the players ‘create’ the rules and each concrete instance of the game. So likewise design rules govern the design process but only ‘come to life’ when they are applied in a particular concrete design instance. Further, in the playing of the game the rules never take the same shape or are realised in the same way on two occasions. Every game is a representation, but never a mere repetition, of the rules; and since no two games ever play the rules in the same way, the concrete existence of the rules is not constant, but changes. The rules of the game change in their application, in exactly the same way that Aristotle says that legal enactments change 26

with the particular circumstances of their interpretation.

No single game ever exhausts the possibilities of the rules. The rules are never fully ‘played out’; they are never categorically captured in the playing; and the inexhaustible range of possibilities contained within the rules allows the game its richness, spontaneity and fascination.

27

So likewise,

design rules are never applied twice in the same way, because a large number of contingent factors contribute to endless variations in the design process. The possibilities that lie innate within the design rules are never fully disclosed in any single experience of designing. Heidegger says that, ‘The “because” disappears in play. Play is 28

without a “why”. It plays because it plays.’ The ‘spirit’ of play is its to-and-fro movement, which happens of itself, aimlessly and effortlessly. The game has an autonomous existence, a ‘life of its own’; it has its own rhythm and distinctive buoyancy; it has an existence independent of the rules, so that the game plays the rules as much as the rules determine the game. Similarly, the 65

Interpretation in architecture

design process goes its own way, in a back-and-forth rhythm that is not ruledependent; it follows its own lead, revealing new possibilities at every turn. Again, the game has its own dynamics and goals independent of the consciousness of the player: ‘Play has its own essence which is independent of the consciousness of those who play … The players are not subjects of play; instead play merely reaches presentation through the 29

players.’ The players begin by playing, but are caught up in the game and lose themselves in what is happening. Similarly, the act of designing draws in the designer; the process ‘takes over’, and the designer loses him or herself in what is going on. The activity of designing absorbs the designer and dominates his or her consciousness, so that s/he is not aware of the design rules but only of designing. The designer’s involvement in the design process breaks down the separation of the subject and the object demanded by the epistemic concepts of design rules. Caught up and carried along by the process of designing, the designer does not control it by the application of rule-based techniques, nor by the conscious manipulation of formulae and methods. There is no dichotomy of self and other or subject and object when the designer is absorbed in design. The designer is not a subject who manipulates and controls rules and uses methods, but is a medium in and through which the design process unfolds itself. When absorbed in the activity of designing, designers are not distanced from either the design process or the design situation. Designing is not an object; and the real subject in the design process is design itself. The designer as subject and the design process 30

as object coalesce, and rules merge into the happening of design.

Design understanding is not manifested when designers stand back from the design process so as to manipulate it as an object, but when they are intrinsically involved in the manner of a player who is being played, when they participate in the play of design ideas and are played by those ideas. Designers exercise design understanding when they become the servants rather than the masters of designing. This is not to suggest that the designer takes a merely passive role in designing, waiting for design ideas to appear. Design involvement entails interplay between the movement of the design rules and the 31

movement of the designer who interprets those rules.

Although designers,

like players in a game, follow the moves as they happen and are given over to the rules in that they accept and follow them and in that the rules play back to determine the design moves they make, they are also actively involved in the process of applying the rules at each moment of the process, and the process does not work unless they are actively involved. Designers give themselves over to designing, but this is not a merely passive letting go; at no time are designers more active than when they are no longer acting as 66

Playing by the rules

subjects who stand remote from an objectively observed process, but as agents whose actions and consciousness merge into that process.

32

It should be noted in passing, however, that the case of designing is more complicated than that of game playing. Whereas the rules of the game are clearly laid down, those governing designing are not restricted to those which are explicitly formulated, but also include a multitude of unspoken rules deriving from the cultural tradition of the designer in general and from the design tradition in particular. The designer, consciously or unconsciously, is bound by the rules, both explicit and implicit, of the design tradition, which rules are absorbed from both society at large and from the micro-societies of design schools, the design professions, and so on. Within the bounds of these socially imposed rules the designers are free to design in any way they choose, just as the players in a game are free to play the game as they will, so long as they play by the rules. A strictly defined design rule cannot take these socially determined factors into account because for the greater part they cannot be objectified, being part and parcel of the designer’s makeup.

Theoretical and practical design rules In summary, there are two ways of viewing the rules that govern the design process. On the one hand, as viewed by design science, they belong to a theoretical knowledge that exists prior to any practical application. In this view designing consists in selecting pre-given rules from a store of epistemic knowledge and then applying them in a methodically prescribed manner. The rules remain unchanged in their application, so that they are applied in the same manner in every case. This presupposes that the rules are objective, logical and unchanging in both their formulation and application. For this they must stand remote and as objects to the designer who acts as a subject to manipulate and control them. By contrast, practical design rules are not objective, nor are they applicable in the same way in each design case, but are analogous to the rules which govern the conduct of societies or games, being efficacious and appropriate to the degree that they are capable of giving rise to inexhaustible possibilities of interpretation and action. The former view of design rules is detrimental to design education, disabling in the design studio and in design practice. The quickest way to stifle the ‘spirit’ of a game or the design process is to apply too many overexplicit rules and systematic procedures or to apply them too strictly, which is what design methods attempted to do. Just as the rules of a game should not attempt to determine how each game is to be played, so design rules should not aim to determine how the design process is to work out in 67

Interpretation in architecture

particular design contexts; and just as in a game there is free play, so design requires freedom of movement in the repetitive to-and-fro, going out and coming back. Design rules that have worked out the outcome of design activity in advance preempt the possibilities of action. The to-and-fro movement of the designing game is erratic and confused; but if designers allow the process to lead them where it will, there is the possibility of ‘a flash of light through the confusion of the erratic … Once in a while, when the “breaks of the game” permit, an exceptional breakthrough can take place which gives free access to hidden possibilities 33

never yet explored.’ The more stringent the rules governing the process and the more strictly the design process is preordained by method, the less likelihood there is of an occurrence of these spontaneous ‘flashes’ and ‘breakthroughs’. Such expansions of design possibility depend on reversals of expectations and negations of fore-projections within the hermeneutical circle of designing. Such reversals and negations are precluded by methods which rule out the spontaneous emergence of the unexpected by stipulating procedural algorithms in advance. This does not contradict the fact that the designer, like the judge or the player of a game, must know and abide by the rules governing procedure or play, but means that such rules are subject to application and interpretation. Lest the erratic flash strikes us as mysterious, in the next chapter we turn the spotlight on the hermeneutical response to concepts of creativity and its inscrutability.

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Chapter 3

Creativity as commonplace

Figure captions (clockwise from top left ) 1

Scaffolded west façade of Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, Spain

2

Apartments at Canary Wharf against the backdrop of the Millennium Dome by Foster and Partners

3

Porto, Portugal. An image in celebration of place

Chapter 3

Creativity as commonplace

According to Abercrombie, how the architect resolves the conflicting demands 1

on a project ‘remains a mystery of the creative mind’. In the art of architecture there is ‘something that evades analysis, something that touches us in the most secret parts of our minds, something not only beyond utility but also 2

beyond all that is rational and everyday’. The traditions of architectural modernism have done little to dispel the mysteries of creativity. For Le Corbusier, ‘Art is this pure creation of the spirit which shows us, at certain heights, the summit of the creation to which man is capable of attaining’,

3

4

and exercises a ‘chosen few’. For Louis Kahn, ‘architecture is no science, and planning is no science’. There is a place for scientific method, ‘but it is a 5

matter of feeling, it is a matter of knowing the whole’. The key is inspiration: ‘Can anyone define inspiration? ... It comes out of the essence soul which only 6

has one surge, one force, one energy.’

The mystery of creation here presupposes that there is a kind of thinking that is logical, analytical and rational (epistemic knowledge). Thought that is not explicable in these terms is attributed to a mysterious or transcendent source. Design is therefore to be contrasted with other areas of expertise such as decision-making in science or in management. As with art, design is privileged within areas of professional expertise. There is much in designing that is private and personal to the designer. That which cannot be explained is attributed to the subjective nature of the design process. Design therefore inherits a style of rhetoric whose origins lie deep within the Romantic movement in art. Claims to mystery and subjectivity are acceptable in design thinking, whereas there is general discomfort if similar claims are made of the way 7

science operates, legal judgements are made or medical diagnoses are derived. 71

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The argument that there are two ways of thinking – logical, analytical and rational on the one hand, and subjective, idiosyncratic and irrational on the other – constitutes a dual knowledge thesis. An argument that is often advanced against this thesis attempts to show that all thought 8

is explicable at some level in terms of logical processes. This rationalism dissolves all claims to mystery. Notwithstanding attempts within cognitive science and artificial intelligence to produce rationalistic accounts of cognition, the rationalist position is under severe challenge from the hermeneutical account of thought and understanding. The dual knowledge thesis also gives rise to positions of antagonism manifested as divisions within architectural discourse about the respective roles of science and art. Perhaps more threateningly, it seems to lead to the neo-Jungian categorisation of people according to personality type and ‘vocational 9

suitability’. It therefore becomes a means of exercising control over people and their behaviour. The position presented in this chapter is that the dual knowledge thesis is untenable and unnecessary. It is no more necessary to describe design thinking as mysterious than it is to make the same claims of any other manifestations of expertise. Neither is it necessary to resort to accounts based on rationalism. Hermeneutical philosophy represents a paring away of esoteric and abstract theories and models used to explain everyday phenomena, such as language and thought. This theme is echoed in the pragmatic philosophy of John Dewey.

The dual knowledge thesis Notwithstanding the ‘common sense’, hermeneutical account of how understanding operates, the dual knowledge thesis persists. The distinction is often made between reasoning that is intellectual and logical and reasoning that is intuitive. The former kind of reasoning is posited as that which is accessible to scrutiny. It maps onto textbook knowledge and can be communicated readily through language. The latter, intuitive reasoning, is presented as inaccessible through propositional logic, and it is thought that our language structures are less well suited to its direct expression. Although design may involve both kinds of reasoning, the importance of intuition in design, and its inaccessibility, are thought to render design difficult to teach and to understand. The dual knowledge hypothesis is most vividly presented in the theory that reasoning pertaining to logic and intuition reside in separate hemispheres of the brain. According to this view ‘left mode thinking’ is verbal, analytic, symbolic, abstract, temporal, rational, logical and linear. ‘Right mode 72

Creativity as commonplace

thinking’ is nonverbal, synthetic, concrete, analogic, nontemporal, nonrational, spatial, intuitive and holistic.

10

Kolb asserts that there are two kinds (modes) of knowledge, tracing the distinction through Jung and Piaget. For Kolb these two modes of knowledge, which he refers to as comprehensive (logical) and apprehensive (intuitive), are to be considered relative to the transformation processes by which meaning is acquired: extension (individual actions) and intention (reflective abstraction). The modes of knowledge and the transformation processes form two axes in a classification schema which he uses to identify different styles of learning. For example, learning to play billiards may involve a learning strategy that proceeds from abstract conceptualisation in the application of some rules of physics to active experimentation (individual actions). This style is called ‘convergence’. The player may then progress to relying on a ‘global intuitive feel’ of the situation. This is ‘accommodation’. When the player reflects on concrete experience and pick up hints, this is ‘divergence’. Finally, the player may even reason from the abstract rules of physics and reflective observation to engage in model-building, which is assimilation.

11

The four learning styles

(convergence, accommodation, divergence and assimilation) correspond to the four quadrants of a biaxial system. This schema can be related to personality types and forms the basis of a system of testing and classifying for educational specialisations and vocations. Designers, such as architects, are typically found among the divergers, along with students of the humanities and biologists. Engineers are accommodators, along with managers, chemists and medical doctors. Mathematicians are typically assimilators. Economists and physicists are convergers.

12

Of course, these

distinctions apply to different activities within the vocations, and the exercise of expertise is thought to involve a play between each of these modes of thinking. 13

These theories have significant implications for design. They are employed to support the view that different areas of expertise deal with different kinds of reasoning. The way that designers arrive at designs is different to the way that managers make decisions, judges make rulings and chemists devise experiments. According to this view, to the extent that designing is a ‘divergent’ activity it is less understandable than convergent activities, which are essentially the application of theories. Of course, a hermeneutical view of design represents a major challenge to the dual knowledge thesis. The dissolution of the dual knowledge thesis is a strong theme within the philosophies of Heidegger and Gadamer. As we have seen, Gadamer’s argument extends even further and claims the unity of understanding and action (application). The objective of learning is always 73

Interpretation in architecture

understanding. This is in accord with Kolb’s idea of understanding as the appropriation of experience, but it is more pervasive than he suspects. If all human thought and action has this hermeneutical characteristic then the dual knowledge distinction is unnecessary. The hermeneutical nature of understanding is shared by both the ‘divergent’ activity of designing and the ‘convergent’ activity of solving a mathematical problem. Creating a work of art and applying a rule to predict the motion of a billiard ball are both hermeneutical, even though the media, subject matter and corpus of experiences will be different among areas of expertise, as will aptitudes. Confusion often arises over the relationship between thinking and the automation of methods and procedures. Within a very limited range the results of certain tasks (mostly logical and mathematical) can be achieved equally by both human expertise and algorithms, either carried through as if mechanically, or implemented on a computer. It is well recognised, however, that the similarity does not extend to similarities of process. Simply because there is this similarity does not distinguish a mode of thinking that is algorithmic. When we follow rules, procedures and methods it is in their application that expertise lies. As outlined in Chapter 2 (Playing by the rules), the application of rules is a matter of experience, which brings us back to thought as hermeneutical. Designing does not entail a particular cognitive process different to other reasoning. If there is any ‘mystery’ in design thinking then it is a mystery shared by thinking within all areas of expertise. There is a strong historical tradition that permits us to apply metaphors of mystery to design thinking and to art, whereas similar license is not granted to chemistry, mathematics, law and management. If there are not two kinds of thinking then perhaps there are two sources of understanding. Can we not distinguish between understanding that arises through the personal and idiosyncratic insights and opinions of the interpreter, and understanding derived through the observation of things as they really are? This contrast between the subjective and the objective runs deep within Enlightenment and Romantic thought. As we have seen, it is also a primary target of philosophical hermeneutics.

Romanticism and design The Romantic tradition, beginning with Kant and developed by Hegel and other German idealists, brought to prominence the idea of the self (or ego) as the supreme legislator of nature. This led to the development of complex philosophies that sought to reconcile the self-identity of humankind with that of the world around us. The spirit as human or natural ‘soul’ or ‘identity’ 74

Creativity as commonplace

appeared as an element of philosophy. Hegel developed a phenomenology of the spirit through which one could chart the stages of the mind up to its attainment of absolute knowledge and the practice of philosophy. He distinguished between: 1

subjective spirit, which is soul or consciousness, and has

2

objective spirit which is a spirit which exists out there and does

knowledge and desires; not have a subject, such as right, morality, social ethics, the state and history; and 3

absolute spirit which is a synthesis of subjective and objective spirit and also nature and spirit. For Schelling, spirit represented the ultimate phase in an ‘evolution’

of which nature was just one part. Nature is intelligence in the process of ‘becoming’. Spirit is the ultimate phase of the evolution of nature – inorganic nature to organic nature to spirit. Reality evolves until it reaches the highest 14

form, human freedom.

An appeal to spirit persists in some design theory and contributes substantially to the account of design as involving the mysterious. The mystery is attributable to the complexity and arbitrariness of theories of spirit, but more significantly to the divide engendered between science and art, analysis and experience. This is evident in the writing of Norberg-Schulz, as he reflects on his own transition from a scientific to an existentialist position. In Intentions in Architecture art and architecture were analyzed ‘scientifically,’ that is, by means of methods taken over from natural science. I do not think that this approach is wrong, but today I find other methods more illuminating. When we treat architecture analytically, we miss the concrete environmental character, that is, the very quality which is the object of man’s identification, and which may give him a sense of existential foothold.

15

The new object of study to which he alludes is the spirit of place. Appeal is made to the genius loci that formed part of ancient Roman belief that 16

every independent being has its genius, its guardian spirit. This spirit gives life to people and places, accompanies them from birth to death, and determines their character or essence. The genius thus denotes what a thing 17

is, or what it ‘wants to be’, to use a phrase of Louis Kahn’s. Although it may not always have been expressed as such, this genius, or local character, is said to persist as a source of inspiration to artists and writers. The role of the architect is to capture this spirit. 75

Interpretation in architecture

Architecture means to visualize the genius loci, and the task of the architect is to create meaningful places, whereby he helps man to dwell.

18

As such, this art is to be contrasted to a concern with the merely practical. But architecture is a difficult art. To make practical towns and buildings is not enough. Architecture comes into being when a ‘total environment is made visible,’ … In general, this means to concretize the genius loci. We have seen that this is done by means of buildings which gather the properties of the place and bring them close to man.

19

This rhetoric belongs substantially within the Romantic and historicist traditions, relying on the oppositions alluded to earlier, between human and world, science and art, theory and practice. The means of access to the essential character of a place is sensitivity, which requires a poetic disposition and well-crafted imagery. Designing is supposed to be inspired, so the medium within which this discourse takes place assumes the character of inspirational literature. It is also significant that it involves a style of discourse that is sanctioned within art and design, but not one that is permitted within supposedly analytical disciplines. May one so readily speak of the essential character of an illness, or of a business case, or the spirit of a 20

legal trial? The idea of the genius loci is scarcely sustainable in the light of hermeneutical critique. The idea presupposes the existence of essences independently of the horizon or background within which the search for such characteristics is undertaken. The idea of an essence assumes that the ‘strength’ of the genius of a particular place, or the extent to which particular buildings ‘concretise’ the genius of their site is a matter of fact. It is simply there, and can be appropriated with the right training and sensitivity. The Romantic terminology of essence and genius removes the concerns of design from the everyday world. It obfuscates the concern, which lies beneath Norberg-Schulz’s special terminology, with the social, cultural, political and physical forces which give a place its character. It also obscures the common experience that we ourselves are subject to similar forces in how we appreciate and interpret our situation in a place. Neither does it allow that our being there – as a tourist, as an inhabitant or someone looking at a photograph – is a part of the experience. In summary, genius loci serves to inhibit a discussion of design using everyday questions, such as ‘how would you describe this site?’ Ironically, because it does not see the understanding of a design and its site or context as a matter of interpretation, it limits rather than extends design discourse and thereby diminishes our understanding of a place. 76

Creativity as commonplace

Creative cognition If design does not draw on some mysterious impulse, a split brain, genius or sensitivity to place, then perhaps at least it involves a special kind of thinking that distinguishes it from ordinary thinking. There are those within cognitive science who assume as much. The language of cognitive science is arguably different to that of philosophical hermeneutics, predicated as it is on concepts of knowledge and process,

21

as opposed to hermeneutics’ concern with

understanding. The vexed relationship between the two disciplines is elaborated by Dreyfus, Winnograd and Flores, and Gallagher.

22

Is it possible

to talk of creativity as a special kind of cognitive functioning? Boden asserts as 23

much in her book The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms.

There are four basic presuppositions concerning creativity evident in some areas of cognitive science. First is the assumption that creativity is a cognitive faculty or function, which is to say creativity is identifiable as something that happens when we think in certain ways. The conferences on cognition and creativity suggest as much,

24

but then some of the insights of

certain branches of cognitive science contradict this. The insights of neural network theory, for example, suggest that cognitive faculties are distributed and holistic, and there is really no difference in cognitive function between, say, remembering something and inventing a brand new proposition.

25

In

neural network models the same architecture and algorithms apply in each case. We can add to this argument the simple linguistic observation that ‘creativity’, ‘feeling’ and ‘intelligence’ are terms in language that we use in particular situations. Thanks to the Enlightenment and Romantic legacy they are highly privileged terms. When putting together a book on artificial intelligence and design with colleagues, we laboured over whether creativity is in the process or the product.

26

But the issue is a non-starter. Creativity is

a construct in language that has application in various situations. I am able to identify and defend a creative student, a creative project, and I am prepared to say that writing a paper is more creative than vacuuming the carpet, but ‘creativity’ is a term without essence. If we wish to identify creativity as a cognitive function to be dissected, studied and modelled then we may as well give the same treatment to irony, shyness, good taste or a sense of adventure as discrete cognitive functions. The identification of any cognitive activity or human faculty is a contextual matter. The second presupposition is that creativity, or any cognitive function, is regarded as a phenomenon pertaining to the individual. Here the Romantic legacy of the genius comes to the fore. Romanticism sets up the dichotomy of the individual versus the group. Occasionally individuals can club together and pool their individual abilities to produce something greater than either could have accomplished alone, but here the concept of the group is 77

Interpretation in architecture

derived from the concept of the individual. Individualism makes for simple diagrams – some cognitive process occurs in the brain, which is then realised through some action, such as drawing, which serves as a means of communication to other brains. By contrast, the notion of a field of understanding or creativity, generated and shared by a community, results in illegible diagrams, though it is nearer our experience. Third, cognitive science treats creativity, or any cognitive function, as a mental function as opposed to a bodily one. Thinking occurs in the brain. But even from a reductive point of view we can argue that the nervous system pervades the entire body. For some purposes it makes sense to talk of the brain as a controller. If it is severed from the rest of the body then the organism dies. But the body is made up of many systems that have parts that show greater and lesser degrees of dependence, and that dependency depends on circumstance. From this physiological point of view it is also valid to say that thinking occurs in the hands. Without the use of the hand, designing becomes very difficult. If cognition depends on the nervous system it also depends on the physiology that supports and sustains the nervous system, and the uncountable inputs from the rest of the body, and their complex interactions. Analytic philosophers such as Gilbert Ryle have eloquently argued for a broader conception of thinking that extends concepts 27

of the mental to include the body.

The fourth assumption is that creativity, or any cognitive function, occurs within the organism or among organisms interacting. Again, from a biological point of view, we can regard the living organism as so much a part of its environment. As Lakoff and Johnson remind us, the concepts through which we structure our existence are intimately connected with our existence as beings subject to spatial experiences: gravity, light, geometry and so on (see Chapter 10). Then there are the particular circumstances each of us finds ourselves in as we move from one moment to the next.

28

Our incessant

interaction with each other, our history and our environment are so intense that it also makes sense to say that creativity, thought, memory and other cognitive functions are in the situation as much as in the organism. Advocates of the view that cognition is situated, distributed, decentralised, embodied and embedded, such as Clark, further suggest that cognition involves a closer coupling with our world than we may ever 29

understand. The brain is a very ‘lazy’ organ, that operates by taking so much in its environment for granted, manifested in mnemonics and our reliance on 30

being in particular spaces as aids to remembering,

thinking and going about

our daily routines. We take cues from social and practical settings, and these contribute in a major way to the processes of thought. The brain just gathers together the threads, reinforces the appropriate connections, and completes useful patterns. This is not to trivialise brain functioning or cognition, but to 78

Creativity as commonplace

illustrate its dispersed character, and the richness and complexity of the world and our engagement in it. This style of cognitive investigation draws on Heideggerian concepts of readiness-to-hand. It also suggests that being-inthe-world is already a creative engagement. The challenges to the presupposition that creativity is special indicate that there is an arbitrariness to its identification and study. In other words, the study of creativity is not driven by a detached objectivity, as though creativity is something that is there and we need to understand more about it, but by other agendas. Donald Schön highlights one of these agendas in identifying the story of the space race.

31

America, with Western Europe

following, felt it had to do something to counter the success of the Russians putting the first sputnik into orbit. It was not simply that America required better technology, but more creative scientists and engineers. This legacy continues, and the study of creativity still attracts funding. In the UK this concern has more recently been translated to the identification of the ‘creative industries’, as major sources of economic growth.

32

Of course, other human

‘faculties’ such as perspicuity, humour, chivalry or conviviality would not have emerged as the saving function, as these faculties did not enjoy the same currency as creativity in the Enlightenment and Romantic legacies.

Creativity and pragmatism William James (1842–1910), one of the first proponents of the philosophical movement known as pragmatism, advocated an understanding of mental states as a stream of consciousness, a holistic state of ceaseless, chaotic, multi-level mental flow, that we carve up and define in different ways for different purposes.

33

He would have done better to exclude the concept of

chaos from this understanding, as ‘stream of consciousness’ has assumed a Romantic interpretation in the reflections of some artists and theorists, similar to the concepts of spirit and genius. But the key concept is the indivisible nature of thinking. John Dewey, also of the pragmatic movement, debunked the notion that there are different modes of thought – rational and logical on the one hand and aesthetic (we may say, creative) on the other.

34

According to Dewey, every act involves us in some kind of aesthetic appreciation, involving the imagination, ethical sensibility and the emotions. This applies whether we are solving a mathematical problem, making a scientific judgement, laying bricks, writing a paper, listening to music or designing a house. This is not to say that all these activities are the same. They differ in context, the mode of explanation by which we justify our actions, and the communities in which they operate. Each activity is not the exercise of a different cognitive function. Neither does each represent the 79

Interpretation in architecture

exercise of different cognitive functions in different degrees. If this seems to label all cognitive events as the same, it also labels every one as different. Designing a house today is different to the experience of designing a house yesterday. The way I am creative today is sufficiently different to the way that I was creative yesterday that it makes little sense to ascribe the occasions to the same cognitive process. As we have seen, theories of hermeneutics draw attention to the situated nature of all judgements. In our discussion here, interpretation displaces cognition as providing the operative account of reason. Perhaps the most potent challenge to the concept of creativity as a study in cognitive science comes from Heidegger’s concepts of being-in-the-world.

35

We are

more situated than we can ever appreciate. Prior to the concept of the individual creative genius, is the concept of beings totally engaged in a world, without differentiation. From this indeterminate whole, we can construct theories of cognition for particular purposes. This is a productive pursuit, provided we do not assume that in so doing we are closer to a monolithic understanding of who we are and what the world is like.

What is different about design? In summary, design does not make use of a special kind of reasoning. There is no sense in which we are able to stand back from an objective world, either in art or in science, to see it as it really is. Neither is understanding a subjective phenomenon in which understanding is purely personal and idiosyncratic. The common distinction between subject and object is a transient phenomenon that becomes disabling as a basis for structuring how we understand the world. (Lakoff and Johnson describe the subject–object distinction as the use of a particular metaphor structure, one of many to which we have recourse in understanding the world.) The proposition that all understanding is hermeneutical dispenses with the idea that creating art and designing are mysterious and different. This allows Gadamer to talk of truth in art in the same way that truth is discussed in the context of prose. We can ask of a work of art, as for an account of history: ‘is that how it really is?’ The 36

answer is in the interpretation and in the dialogue that ensues.

Notwithstanding this unity, we are committed to differences. The difference between design and everything else is largely explicable in terms of understanding the domain – buildings, engineering structures, industrial products, social processes and the conventions of practice. The question of aptitude in particular kinds of thought processes is replaced with questions of familiarity and experience in terms of domain, media, terminology, communication, coordination and even motor skills. 80

Creativity as commonplace

Dewey provides an appropriate summary of the difference between working as a scientist and working as an artist. The scientist is interested in the resolution of problems about the difference between what is observed and what is expected according to the theories. As a problem is solved the scientist moves on to new inquiries while building on earlier solutions. The artist is similarly involved in moments of tension and resolution. The major difference is in tempo. The ultimate matter of both emphases in experience is the same, as is also their general form. The odd notion that an artist does not think and a scientific inquirer does nothing else is the result of converting 37

a difference of tempo and emphasis into a difference in kind.

In this context we may take ‘thinking’ to be intellectual, logical activity, in opposition to the ‘unthinking’ processes of intuition. Apart from tempo there is a difference in medium. Because of the comparative remoteness of his end, the scientific worker operates with symbols, words and mathematical signs. The artist does his thinking in the very qualitative media he works in, and the terms lie so close to the object that he is producing that 38

they merge directly into it.

Thinking directly in terms of colours, tones, images, is a different operation technically from thinking in words. But only superstition will hold that, because the meaning of paintings and symphonies cannot be translated into words, or that of poetry into prose, 39

therefore thought is monopolised by the latter.

The issues of media and the time frame within which design deliberations occur have obvious implications in the way design is practised and taught.

Environments to think by The environment within which designing is learnt and practised is distinctive. The studio setting emphasises the importance of personal interaction and deliberation. What is necessitated by the special requirements of media, community and time also serves as an affirmation of designing as a deliberate act. Unlike the development of many areas of professional skill, design learning concentrates substantial effort on the act of deliberation. In this sense other disciplines could learn a great deal from studio-based learning. 81

Interpretation in architecture

There are several factors, raised by this discussion, which can militate against the effectiveness of the design studio as a learning environment. These include the shrouding of design in mystery. The dual knowledge thesis in all its guises throws the designer into a morass of difficulties that range from an unnecessary fear of the unknown to attempting to reconcile notions of ‘subjective judgement’ with certainty. Where design is isolated from ‘normal’ scholarship or day-to-day activities, there is the tendency to ignore the difficulties of designing. The studio may be a place where everything happens but design. It becomes a place for discussions about the particular design task or about design in general. It may be a place for exhortations before the task of designing, and criticism after the event. However, the activity itself, in which an attempt to switch from the ‘convergence of analytical thinking’ to the ‘divergence of design thinking’, is frequently relegated to the realm of a private anguish. On the other hand, it is apparent that there are ways of talking about design and of teaching design in which an appeal to mystery or special cognitive skills is unnecessary. Where there is mystery then designing is removed from effective dialogue. Design ideas are personal and unavailable for general scrutiny. The designer becomes a party to that other great theme of the Romantic movement, the oppressed and misunderstood hero. In defusing the mysteries of a special creative apparatus, we see that the condition of being-in-the-world already implicates the cogito. In the sense developed by Hegel and Heidegger, thought is in the world and of the 40

world, and we participate from time to time to claim some of it as our own.

Are some environments more conducive to thoughtful and creative outcomes than others? If so, then perhaps architecture could concern itself (again) with the orchestration of suitably mnemonic and cognitive environments: rooms, public spaces, landscapes and technospheres by which to think. Design brings the commonplace of creativity to light in that it presents as so many interventions into the environment. Thought is provoked anew, or set on a different course when an urban sculpture is unveiled, a façade is defiled, a bridge is completed, an office building is demolished, ancient foundations are excavated, or the scaffolding comes down to reveal a new building. By this reading we don’t just think in order to produce designs, but design interventions in the environment provoke thought. Design is a way of thinking.

82

Part 2 Edification

Education and architecture are intimately connected. Both presume to build up – the edification of the learner in the case of education and the building of 1

edifices in the case of architecture. This neat pivoting around the word ‘edify’ also pins design down to processes of learning. As outlined in Part 1, the designer is involved in a dialogue with a design situation, even without a tutor present. In Socratic fashion the material conditions of the design moment speak back to the designer, declaring possibilities and limitations that are instructive. We learn from one design moment to the next, and from one design commission to another. Learning progresses from the cradle to old age, punctuated by periods of intimate engagement with communities and institutions (schools, colleges and universities), where learning and professional authorisation are placed at centre stage. In this part we canvas major positions on education, understood in the context of interpretation theory. We draw substantially on Shaun Gallagher’s excellent book

Hermeneutics and Education for this overview, and give our own slant in the context of architectural education. When we first canvassed these issues in the early 1990s, our own understanding, and that of the theorists on whom we drew, was imbued with a strong sense of crisis. Universities appear to be very robust and adaptable institutions, although the place of architecture within them is less secure. By 2005, UK architectural education was caught in a conflict involving the RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects) and the body that accredits schools of architecture (Architects Registration Board). The conflict was largely a matter of who sets standards and who regulates entry to the profession. The university funding councils represented a third protagonist. They deployed 83

Interpretation in architecture

the UK Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) as an instrument for determining part of the funding allocation to universities, and as a rating system that became a major determinant of institutional prestige. The story is complex, but the condition at the time of writing is one of uncertainty, a movement towards uniformity in educational outcomes across the sector, the diminution in distinctions between schools, and larger class sizes to regain profitability. The administration of public liability, health and safety, freedom of information, equal opportunities, consumer protection, and the preservation of intellectual property have exacted an administrative toll. These continue the perennial crises which we investigated in 1992. The difficulty as ever seems to reside in negotiating the tricky path between the autonomous self-image of a discipline and instrumental exigencies. The crisis also appears in terms of a conflict that emerges in the claims of universities towards rationality, understood in a particularly instrumental, control-oriented and managerial way. The antidote to instrumentalism in education is a kind of relaxation away from the current obsession with controls and standards. The pretext for standards is often attempted immunity of the regulating body from litigation, the charge of accrediting schools of architecture that produce incompetent architects, where competence is ultimately determined by adherence to standards and skills-based criteria. Comparisons with other disciplines are telling. In UK law schools it is fairly common for educational practitioners to declare that they are only concerned with academic law. Training for practice is 2

often conducted in large city practices, and paid for by firms. Architecture has no such confidence of its place in universities, though the design studio provides an excellent model that all subject areas could follow. This is also to assert design and practice as forms of research. To research is to interpret, and to design is to intervene. The design studio presents as a formidable environment for investigation, intervention and application, which is to say, interpretation. Contemporary hermeneutics is not a unified school of thought but presents a spectrum of positions on the functioning of interpretation. We canvas some of the major controversies as they pertain to architectural education in the next chapter (The disintegrated curriculum). We show how the radical strategies of deconstruction are subject to the workings of interpretation. Education makes much of the distinction between theory and practice (Chapter 2), a distinction we scrutinise from the point of view of contemporary education. Conflating and problematising the relationship between theory and practice brings the ethical components of design into awareness. We suggest that there are aspects of theorisation, in its common academic usage, that are to be resisted. In Chapter 5 (Ethics and practice) we explore the implications of the resultant hermeneutical virtue ethics for architectural education. 84

Edification

Ethical judgement relates to evaluation and assessment. It is common to hear the lament that the assessment of design is insufficiently objective, that design lacks rigorous standards of assessment. Hermeneutical studies indicate that objectivity is a chimera, and that design fares no better under the rule of subjectivity. In Chapter 6 (Design assessment) we examine critically the subjectivity–objectivity distinction, and its resolution in the concept of hermeneutical communities. In Chapter 7 (Design amnesia) we revisit the theme of history, this time as a potent force for transformation and translation in the educational strategies of the design studio. Design as translation projects the past into the present and future to activate memory and open up possibilities. History as memory stores and restores the past, thus guaranteeing preservation and continuity. The design studio provides an environment for dynamic repetition as a process of interpretation and translation, through which the possibilities inherent in the architectural past are permitted to disclose themselves. The designer-translator participates in a two-way dialogue of question and answer with a text taken from the architectures of other times and other places.

85

Chapter 4

The disintegrated curriculum

Figure captions (clockwise from top left) 1–7

Imperial War Museum, Trafford, UK. Architect: Daniel Libeskind. An architecture of disjunction on a factious theme, and by an architect who teaches and theorizes on teaching

Chapter 4

The disintegrated curriculum

In advancing the cause of economic growth and public accountability, government policies commonly resort to the language of production. So the UK construction industry must ‘realise maximum value for all clients, end users and stakeholders and exceed their expectations through the consistent 1

delivery of world class products and services’. One means to this end is ‘education and training in the value of long term integrated supply chains’.

2

Education becomes part of that supply chain, supplying industry and the professions with a ready workforce. The factory metaphor suggests efficiency, uniformity, compliance and integration. This productivist rationality encounters 3

resistance from architectural educators, who negotiate the fine line between maintaining standards but also want to see creativity flourish through diversity and uncertainty. Productivist, instrumental and calculative policies lack any advocacy 4

of criticism. Such policies assume that the role of the professional in society 5

is clear and unproblematic. It is the role of the professional school to produce graduates with the requisite skills and competencies to fit into accepted modes 6

of practice. The motto of the UK Architect’s Registration Board is ‘protecting the consumer and safeguarding the reputation of architects’. What constitutes an architect is well defined, and the problems the professional encounters are assumed to be well stated. Problems are there to be analysed and solved. The status and role of the profession itself is beyond the realm of problem-solving inquiry. On the other hand, experience tells us that the professional is implicated in the formulation or setting of the problem in any particular 7

situation. Calculative reason seems to ignore the fact that ‘problem setting’ is 8

itself circumspective and problematic, a view developed at length by Schön.

89

Interpretation in architecture

The origins of education as an instrument for securing social and economic outcomes can be traced back at least as far as the sixteenth-century 9

French educationalist Peter Ramus. Walter Ong brings to light Ramus’ extreme schematic treatment of knowledge, his accountant-like stress on categorisation and analysis, and the influence of his methods in Europe during the period leading up to Descartes and the Enlightenment. In more recent times calculative reason has been bolstered by positivism and scientism which persist in certain influential disciplines and in certain corners of government bureaucracy. Furthermore, a general discontent with declining morals and educational standards prompted influential commentators such as Eric Hirsch and Allan Bloom to articulate and support the instrumental goal of reinstating education as a means of conserving the best aspects of a culture.

10

In this

respect education, as an instrument of calculative reason, presents as a conservative strategy. Despite its talk of progress, the future, leadership and the adoption of advanced techniques and technologies, it supports the preservation of knowledge, its transfer from the expert to the novice, and the assurance of consistency in standards. Calculative reason provides simple blueprints for action. As long as there is a chance of predictable outcomes then it appears that something is being done, policies are being set in train, standards are being maintained, and knowledge is being preserved and is growing. However, it is also apparent that this calculative conservatism is not up to the challenge of education. Mission statements, corporate goals, strategies, outcomes, lists of transferable skills, performance indicators

11

and competency standards are being laid out to

realise the Ramist project of well-defined knowledge bases, consistency and rigour. They also represent a veneer of agreement amongst incommensurable points of view. Meanwhile, talk of flux, revolution and critique are relegated to the margins. As it is very difficult to draft subversion into a strategy plan, such projects may be relegated to the ‘hidden curriculum’.

12

The critique of calculative reason and conservatism in general is a central theme of contemporary critical writing in architecture and cultural theory.

13

According to this critique, calculative reason is based on an

outmoded epistemology. It assumes that knowledge builds on knowledge as if to form some single edifice, and that knowledge can be stored and 14

transmitted. It gives primacy to texts as containers of meaning, and thought as what can be represented on the printed page – authored and reproducible. It represents a ‘bureaucratisation of thought’. More radically, as we will examine in Chapter 11 (Translating tradition), calculative reason is a manifestation of a technological ‘enframing’, an inevitable but misguided ‘will to power’ on the part of humankind that assumes it can ultimately control everything: its destiny, its prosperity, the minds of its youth, nature, and the 15

control agent itself – technology. 90

The disintegrated curriculum

These instrumental tendencies towards standardisation and efficiency are countered by liberal educational developments, which date back at least as far as Rousseau in the eighteenth century.

16

Liberalism in

education was championed in the twentieth century by the American pragmatic philosopher John Dewey. Architectural education was also informed by education in art, through which it derives its strong resistance to constriction, standardisation and state control.

17

The critical tradition of

educational development has its seeds in liberalism, but also in Marx. One of the foremost proponents of the critical theme is the South American left18

wing educational theorist Paulo Freire.

If calculative reason is the subject of severe scepticism then there are also serious concerns about critical liberalism. It could be said that one explanation for the persistence of calculative reason is that the liberal stance is no longer vigorous. According to Zavarzadeh and Morton, ‘the [liberal] pedagogical programs of the 1960s were theoretically too weak to cope with 19

the incoherencies and contradictions of the humanities curriculum’.

Further,

Aronowitz and Giroux argue that ‘radical critics remain mired in the language of critique even as its own constituency, much less the majority of teachers, 20

parents and students, have at least for now, tired of this discourse’.

Apart from the apparent political naïvety of liberalism, the educational philosopher, Shaun Gallagher, identifies several serious 21

inconsistencies within the liberal/critical position. We summarise them here briefly. First, there is the elusive posture of the critical overview. The major difficulty with the critical stance is that there is no position where one can stand in order to appropriate the critical position. Aware of the need for a critical posture in history, Rousseau advocated that the teacher give the pupil 22

‘the facts and let him judge for himself’.

But all facts are interpretations. The

impartial position is forever elusive. Second, is the problem of the relativity of emancipation. Emancipation is also an elusive quest. We are only emancipated from one position to another. The idea of total freedom is clearly impossible and meaningless. According to Gallagher, ‘we can emancipate ourselves from something but never from everything’.

23

Third, is the problem of the

concealment of power relations within the critical position. Power can be pernicious when cloaked in the guise of the critical overview. Gadamer is critical of the critical stance: ‘Inasmuch as it seeks to penetrate the masked interests which infect public opinion, it implies its own freedom from any ideology; and that means in turn that it enthrones its own norms and ideals as self-evident and absolute’.

24

Fourth, critical thinking can be seen as a form

of instrumentalism, or calculative reason. The presumption of the critical position places it firmly within the Enlightenment tradition. The objective is emancipation from dogma, prejudice, empire and slavery. As for calculative reason, education is a tool to produce a better society. Education is the 91

Interpretation in architecture

instrument with which the critic seeks to subvert the calculative position. So the critical position also succumbs to technological ‘enframing’, but without integrating this tendency into its discourse.

Radical versus critical education The limits of both calculative reason and the critical position in education provide further evidence of a more general raft of problems collectively identified as the ‘crisis of foundations’. What is the university built on? Is it science, the foundational role of which has been seriously challenged since 25

Kuhn? What are the foundations on which we build our critique? Who is in control of the educational process? One response to these perplexities is to adopt the radical educational position. This is to embrace the very idea of perplexity itself, to elevate it, and to recognise the constitutive role of perplexity as the basis of all understanding. The radical educational position has been labelled as such by 26

and Caputo,

29

which in turn owes much to Heidegger. The radical position seizes

Gallagher Foucault,

27

28

who rely substantially on the work of Derrida

and

on the various oppositions that are assumed within intellectual inquiry, and makes play of their inversion, reversal, demolition and ‘deconstruction’. The philosophy is one of the major themes of post-structuralist and post-modernist thinking, sweeping into many areas of higher education, particularly the humanities, although university governance and government policy are relatively untouched by it. It also represents a major meeting of several traditions including the philosophers of France and Germany, philosophers of science such as Kuhn, pragmatists, and disaffected students of analytical philosophy. These concerns have been brought together by American writers such as Rorty, Bernstein and Dreyfus, to name but a few. Caputo provides a useful introduction to the application of the radical view (deconstruction) to education. Whereas the classical tradition dating back to Plato elevated the immutable, the unchanging, to the place of privilege in the realm of ideas, above the fluctuating uncertainty of the temporal world, the deconstructivist inverts the privilege. Caputo invokes the 30

power of the flux; ‘Structures are but inscribed on the flux’.

In keeping with

hermeneutical concepts outlined in Chapter 1 (Architectural hermeneutics), the common metaphor is that of play: ‘In the end, I want to say, science, action, art and religious belief make their way by a free play and creative 31

movement whose dynamics baffle the various discourses on method’. This is not some statement of despair or futility. Caputo argues this is ‘the only 32

really sensible, or reasonable, view of reason’. The elevation of play represents a profound reversal of the priorities of the ordering mind. 92

The disintegrated curriculum

Gallagher develops the theme of the play element present in 33

education, dating back to Plato. The Greek word for play is paidía, which shares the same root (pais, child) as the word for education paideía. The common distinction is between play and dialectic or serious argument, or between play and education. The radical position is to collapse this distinction – to recover the paidía in paideía. The elevation of play is not vague, frivolous or inconsequential. It has a very serious aspect. This is the dissolution of Cartesian and Enlightenment subjectivity – the philosophy that has committed us to the various battles between objectivism and subjectivism. The elevation of play results in a redefinition, or decentering, of subjectivity. ‘The phenomenon of play destroys the traditional concept of self as substantial entity and reveals the self as an openness to various possibilities … a self process which never stops being a process in play.’

34

The radical position

relates substantially to Gadamer’s concepts of play. According to Gadamer, the ‘players are not the subjects of play; instead play merely reaches presentation through the players’.

35

Zavarzadeh and Morton summarise the deconstructive

(radical) attitude in which we ‘no longer talk about the individual, but about the subject’.

36

Furthermore, deconstruction ‘does not conceptualize the

subject as a stable entity but argues that the parameters of the subject vary according to the discursive practices that are current in any historical 37

moment’.

A further radical, deconstructive, reversal is that between meaning and syntax – the content of a linguistic utterance and its outside form, the sentence; between the signified and the signifier (sign); or between spoken language and its written form. In reasserting the priority of writing (over speech), Derrida elevates the importance of the sign: ‘From the moment that there is meaning there are nothing but signs. We think only in signs.’

38

Meaning is disclosed in the ongoing play of signs – the play of indeterminate meanings: the ‘stability of every meaning is undermined by the shifting play of signifiers’.

39

Elsewhere Derrida writes about the play of difference within the

system – coining the term ‘différance’ as a play on words (in French) to imply that meaning is always deferred along the endless line of signs. Gallagher describes the play thus: ‘every ‘truth’ that the interpreter closes in on becomes one of the plurality of fictions which constitute the play of differences within the system’.

40

According to Caputo the task of understanding is ‘to keep the

trembling and endless mirror play of signs and texts in play’

41

lest meanings

become fixed by the tradition. A further radical reversal echoes Heidegger. The idea that humankind must grasp and control its destiny, and the implements of its destiny such as technology, is replaced by a recognition that we are already under the control of technology. It can only ever be thus. The control that we are under is embedded within the metaphysical tradition of thinking, which is 93

Interpretation in architecture

instrumental by its very nature. This concern is translated by Foucault into a concern with power. Again there is a reversal. We think of power as that which oppresses and is embodied in laws and systems of government. It is something from which we should be emancipated. However, according to Foucault, substantive power is not reducible to the representation of law or systems of government. He says that power ‘needs to be considered as a productive network which runs through the whole social body, much more than as a negative instance whose function is repression’.

42

The radical themes of deconstruction lead to a suspicion of principles of reason, and also of institutions that promote principled reason, such as universities. According to this view, institutions are generally set up to arrest the play of reason and to replace it with the principle of reason.

43

According to Caputo, the play of reason is under two kinds of pressure. One is from within the university: Debates about reason are debates conducted by university professors in journals and books, at symposia and public lectures, by men and women who aspire to tenure, promotion, and support for more research. What is rational and what is not are very often a function of the powers that be within the academy, of those who hold the senior faculty positions in a more or less identifiable number of elite institutions … in a self-validating, selfcongratulating circle which controls the profession.

44

There is also pressure from outside the institution. According to Caputo, the university is looked upon ‘to supply the technical and professional needs of society – its needs for scientists, engineers, accountants, computer specialists, nurses, physicians, lawyers … It is expected to train future citizens, to make good Americans (or Frenchmen, or whatever one needs).’

45

All this serves to distract from the play of reason. In Caputo’s view, the humanities are rendered subservient to the process. The humanities are those disciplines in which the ‘play of reason’ may still be evident but they are merely ‘retained almost as ornaments or quaint tokens of a bygone age and because of the extreme embarrassment that would 46

result if one simply dropped them’. Of course, the humanities provide a useful place to house subversion. Thinking, no doubt, of the poor reception in some quarters of radical intellectuals in France, Germany, the UK and parts of America, Caputo echoes Derrida: ‘they [universities] provide a useful place to house those who speak, write, and think differently, who are given to subversive, decentering 47

thoughts, who raise high-level criticisms of the existing order’.

In summary, the institutions are implicated in the enframing that concerned Heidegger – that perspective that claims universality, 94

48

the

The disintegrated curriculum

instrumental world view of technological humanity: ‘All problems – political, social, personal – are conceived as technological problems for which an 49

appropriate technology of behaviour is required.’

How can we cope in the modern university? The radical view is that there is no ultimate escape from productivist rationality, or instrumental conservatism. The radical solution is to follow Heidegger’s line of simply letting 50

be – ‘which is an old and difficult art’. As we explore in Chapter 11 (Translating tradition), ‘Letting be’ requires vigilance about power: It should proceed from an acute sense of letting be, which lets reason play itself out, which listens to dissent, continually exposing what is called reason at any time to its other, exposing the ground to what it takes to be groundlessness and abyss.

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Deconstruction carries the reputation in some quarters of intellectual anarchy. But from its own viewpoint nothing could be further from the truth. Deconstruction is subversive, but far from irrational. It is also highly supportive of professional rigour, both in its own practices (its grounding in the rigours of the various philosophical traditions) and its advocacy of rigour in professional education. Derrida and Caputo talk of the ‘double gesture’: combining professional rigour and competence with the subversion of the foundations of the professions: ‘Institutions are the way things get done, and 52

they are prone to violence … Nothing is innocent.’

Deconstructive pedagogy involves: ‘Doing an “inside job” on the 53

institution.’ Derrida suggests what might constitute a legitimate university (or non-university), or community of thought: Such a community would interrogate the essence of reason and of the principle of reason, the values of the basic, of the principial, of radicality, of this arkhe [‘rule’, the opposite to anarchy] in general, and it would attempt to draw out all the possible consequences of 54

this questioning.

This is unlikely to be a traditional institution. It is a role of such an institution to ‘unmask – an infinite task – all the ruses of end-orienting 55

reason’.

Deconstruction and teaching practice How is this dangerous, deconstructive pedagogy realised in practice? What is radical pedagogy at the locus of the classroom or studio? These questions 95

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have attracted considerable attention from educationalists, particularly in the study of literature and writing composition, though as we shall see subsequently they are already highly influential in architectural education. Some of the radical possibilities are summarised by Atkins and Johnson.

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First, in deconstruction there is an appreciation of the importance of the textual nature of literature. The conventional doctrine is that ideas are more important than the vehicle used for their communication. There is the ‘clarity–brevity–sincerity’ principle of composition. Under this doctrine style is superfluous. By way of contrast, the radical view opens up the possibility that, rather than providing a decorative surface to reality, style may be the 57

major constitutive element of reality. We can therefore look through literature or we can look at it. The radical approach is to appropriate the play involved in this polarity between content and form, resulting in new understandings and new appreciations of the text. Ulmer suggests that this play can be realised in the lecture 58

presentation itself, which can also be conceived of as a kind of text. The result is the ‘lecriture’, that word being a characteristic play between the French word for writing (écriture), laughter (ri ) and the English/French word ‘lecture’ – laughter is inserted into lecture.

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Similar stylistic license is

exercised with the lecriture itself. It incorporates a reflection on its own genre, without necessarily destroying the genre. According to Ulmer, ‘a lecriture … operates by means of a dramatic, rather than an epistemological, orientation to knowledge’.

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Reflections on the genre of presentation are frequent

characteristics of Derrida’s public addresses. Derrida’s famous paper on universities (‘The principle of reason: the university in the eyes of its pupils’) was an address to an assembly at Cornell University. It begins with a question: ‘Today, how can we not speak of the university?’

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This is followed by an

almost obligatory reflection on the negative form of the question. But this reflection is not without its point. The play between style and content permeates the entire piece, including a reference to the siting of the university and the good reasons given for its location above a gorge. In his presentation, and with subtlety, the gorge on which the university is built becomes the suicidal abyss of nihilism – the reverse side, or constant companion, according to Derrida, to the principle of reason. According to Ulmer the success of the

lecriture relies on its juxtaposition with convention, and the use of irony and parody. A second deconstructive pedagogical ploy is outlined by Ulmer.

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The two errors cautioned within the dominant practice of teaching composition are misreading and plagiarism. Misreading comes about by trying never to reproduce the original – trying to innovate. On the other hand, the postmodern rejection of Romantic ideas of creativity and genius leaves the way open for unbridled plagiarism. The context for the exploration of the 96

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interplay between acceptable writing practice and the breakdown of authorship and originality is the collage (or logokleptism), working with the intellectual property of others, acknowledging the role and perplexity of mechanical reproduction. Collage involves taking over found material and placing it in different contexts. This can be translated to bricolage in writing, writing with the mass of data that already exists – regarded as an appropriate response to the information overload of today. How does deconstruction influence attitudes to the educational subject matter? Johnson contrasts the conventional attitude to the text within 63

literary criticism and that suggested by deconstruction. The former embodies a strategy to stop reading when the ‘text stops saying what it ought to have said’.

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By way of contrast, ‘deconstruction is a reading strategy that carefully

follows both the meanings and the suspensions and displacements of meaning in a text’.

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Contrary to popular conceptions of deconstruction,

Johnson makes it clear that deconstruction is not a form of ‘textual vandalism’ or a ‘generalized scepticism designed to prove that meaning is impossible’.

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Neither is it to assume that every text is secretly self-reflexive, or that every text consists only in the play of signifiers, or it is possible to read from every text a commentary about the relation between speech and writing. Johnson also makes it clear that deconstruction does not equate with destruction. If anything is destroyed it is not meaning that is destroyed, but the idea of an exclusive reading: ‘the claim to unequivocal domination of one mode of signifying over another’.

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According to Johnson, contrary to fostering an esoteric or supercilious posture towards literature, deconstruction proves a valuable device for making the text accessible to the student: ‘Because deconstruction is first and foremost a way of paying attention to what a text is doing – how it means not just what it means – it can lend itself very easily to an open discussion format in a literature seminar’.

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Johnson draws out the

challenges that a text might provide for a deconstructive reading. One is to seize on ambiguous words to focus an entire discourse. This is clearly itself a reversal from convention, where ambiguity is regarded as an inconvenience. Another challenge is where a text deliberately suggests different possibilities through a syntax that leads to multiple and conflicting interpretations. A text may also outline what it is not about, thereby invoking a contradiction between what the text says and what it does. A text may also involve the contradiction of a literal statement with a figurative statement. A critique may involve pointing out how an illustrative example in someone else’s text proves the opposite to the assertion it is meant to support (as in Derrida’s handling of Saussure in relation to writing and speech). Another device is to deliberately introduce obscurity to promote inquiry. Counter to the use of obscurity is the use of ‘excessive clarity’ in a 97

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text to solve the problems the text sets up. In this manner the text can be seen to illustrate the interpretive process itself. Zavarzadeh and Morton further draw out the distinction between the conventional and the deconstructive view of the reading of a text. The former gives priority to a close, analytical reading of a text in order to understand it. Deconstruction replaces the ‘close’ reading of a text with the idea of ‘strong’ 69

reading. The conservative ideas of analysis and appreciation evade the political and epistemological status of the text, and conceal the ‘commodification of 70

sensations and aesthetic experience’. The conservative idea of analysis also suggests that details within the text are the sites of meaning. By way of contrast, the deconstructive approach enables the teacher to allow the text to reveal to students something of their own situation in the power matrix: the teacher makes it possible for the student to become aware of his position, of his own relations to power/knowledge formations. Such a teacher often has an adversarial role in relation to the student: the teacher is a deconstructor and not a mere supporter in the traditional sense of the word. She helps to reveal the student to himself by showing him how his ideas and positions are the effects of larger discourses (of class, race and gender, for example) rather 71

than simple, natural manifestations of his consciousness or mind.

But radical pedagogy expresses an even more far-reaching concern. For Ulmer, deconstructive radical pedagogy is ‘to the sciences what the carnival once was to the Church … In terms of curriculum, carnival disrespect means the inversion of the “order” of disciplines’.

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According to Ulmer,

initiates into a discipline normally have to wait many years before they are allowed to see its ‘frame’: ‘the inner “mystery” of any discipline is not its order 73

or coherence but is its disorder, incoherence, and arbitrariness’. Thus radical pedagogy enables the student to bypass initiation as a specialist and to confront both the grounding of a discipline, its absolutes, as well as the provisional, destructible nature of that grounding. How is radical, deconstructive pedagogy available to architectural education? In our introduction we referred to styles of architectural practice 74

and pedagogy that celebrate the play of the bricoleur. The authors have been associated with many attempts to bring aspects of pedagogy informed by deconstruction into professional education, specifically the design studio, and have been observers of many others. One such approach is to bring the textual nature of designing to the fore, in treating the brief or programme requirements as texts for deconstruction, integrating reading and re-reading into the design strategy. The project and the text are seen as dynamic interpretations each of the other. 98

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Our own first self-conscious use of a deconstructive strategy took place in the early 1990s, through a studio experiment that required students to explore oppositions inherent in the design of domestic architecture, to bring those oppositions to light, to challenge them, and to engage in two design tasks. The first was to redesign an existing building by reversing, challenging and subverting some of the major oppositions built into it and largely taken for granted. The second task was to redesign the building by ‘reconciling’ these subverted oppositions. There was therefore a ‘deconstruction’ and a ‘reconstruction’. Understandably, the reconstruction resulted in something different again to the original design. On the face of it, the educational outcomes were of the kind that would meet with the approval of the most conventional design educator. It was as if students were taken through a series of exercises, in the manner of a role play, to bring out the hidden structure behind conventional practice, to investigate this practice further by ‘subverting’ it (a kind of ‘analysis’), then from this new experience and insight, synthesise something new. However, the studio had other dimensions more in keeping with the paradigm of radical pedagogy. There were many reversals in the programme, all of which sparked critical discussion amongst the students. The relationship between drawings and designs loosely parallels the deconstructive literary critic’s concern with writing and speech, style and content. In architecture, it is common to regard drawings as a means of communicating ‘design intent’. The selection of an appropriate presentation style commonly comes at the end of the project. In this studio one of the reversals was to begin with drawings, bringing the interactive nature of drawing and designing to the fore. Students were asked at the outset to study ‘straight’ and ‘deconstructed’ presentation styles evident in the architectural literature, the latter being a presentation style that highlighted the ambiguities and oppositions in a design. Students were then asked to re-present an existing design (a precedent, such as Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye) using the ‘deconstructed’ presentation style. Later on, they would use that style, or a variation on it, for the presentation of the final design. Students were required at various stages to present their work to the group. On several occasions the work was presented not by its author, but by a fellow student, to whom the scheme had already been explained. In one situation a drawing presentation was explained to the author/s by the audience, who had to interpret and discuss what the presentation was about. This brought to light the nature and role of interpretation itself, as well as revealing new insights to the student about their own work and ways of thinking. The discussion of oppositions within the existing house designs readily focused on the obvious – such as front and back, upstairs and 99

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downstairs, public and private – showing how there is a privileging in each case, and how this privileging may have changed historically. The discussion also brought out the play between such oppositions, and raised the question of what would happen if the privileging were reversed, or the opposition were reversed, or the opposition were dissolved. This also involved a consideration of how the privileging comes through in language and in our drawing and designing practices. For example, light and dark featured in discussion: we talk of total darkness but not of total lightness. Also, there is a priority given to front and rear aspects of a building compared to the sides. We do not have a common word to distinguish the sides from each other that implies one is more important than the other. The relationships between oppositions were also discussed, such as light and dark, sun and moon, male and female. A consideration of these simple oppositions, identified in most cases by the students themselves, paved the way for a discussion of more vexed oppositions, such as: real and ideal; the representation versus the reality; the presenter versus the audience; the designer versus the client; order versus chaos. In the latter case a student took it upon herself to look for the chaos in the apparently ordered drawing and the order in the chaotic drawing. At various stages discussion focused on whether the deconstructive exercise was merely an intellectual game; or was it an exercise to address entrenched power structures and prejudices, and develop appropriate responses to pressing social, urban and environmental issues? At times attention also focused on the nature of the profession of architecture and on university education. The discursive practice of deconstruction, its novelty at that time, and the students’ curiosity about the field, generated a high level of critical inquiry, not normally afforded in more conventional design studios. But the exercise was not merely one of ‘consciousness raising’. Nor was ‘talk’ the only medium of presentation. In writing about studio experience it is always easier to focus on what was said rather than what was done. There were positive outcomes in terms of practical skills. The design outcomes were judged to be innovative. Furthermore, the ‘plagiarism’ of designs and presentation styles did not result in mere reproductions. Designs and presentation styles had been translated into new designs and new presentation styles. Neither was it the case that the deconstructions were arbitrary. For example, it was apparent that to locate bathroom facilities in the public part of a house does not result in an absurdity, but in a different and innovative kind of house, a new set of design challenges, and even new ways of living. The design studio has features similar to the other university sites of practical application – the tutorial seminar, the laboratory and the workshop – but the studio has always also been a site of play, as evident in the early Bauhaus teaching strategies. So the style of pedagogy presented here is not foreign to it. 100

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The design project served to demonstrate, among other things, how far removed deconstructive pedagogy is from anarchy. The real dangers of deconstruction have been institutionalised within deconstruction’s own discourse. The problem is that of normalisation. What would the deconstructive design studio be if it became the norm? According to Gallagher, ‘any attempt to teach abnormal, agonistic discourse would be to normalize it 75

and to turn it into an established discipline’.

For Derrida the worst fear is the

exploitation of deconstruction by conservatism. The perplexities that deconstruction sets up are that the whole radical project may itself be exploited by ‘socio-political forces’,

76

‘reproducing the hierarchy’.

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According 78

to Derrida this risk is unavoidable – ‘it is the risk of the future itself’.

Hermeneutics and education Even though radicalism embraces its own critique, it is not immune to criticism from without.

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Radicalism is also caught up in a series of debates

between conservatism, the critical/liberal position and also with what has 80

been labelled ‘moderate hermeneutics’. The latter asserts that the radical position, along with conservatism and liberalism, is subservient after all to the nature of intellectual communities. The issues of education can be framed in terms of education’s relationship to the practice of interpretation – hermeneutics. The parallels 81

between education and interpretation are explored at length by Gallagher. To be educated is to be brought into a state of understanding. Similarly, to interpret a text (or any situation for that matter) is to understand. In forming this link between education and hermeneutics we have access to a rich tradition of thinking about interpretation, bringing in concepts of dialogue, play, judgement, reproduction, recollection, tradition, power, critique and community. According to Gallagher, the different approaches to education can be placed within an ongoing conversation about the nature of interpretation. There is a conservative hermeneutics, critical hermeneutics, radical hermeneutics and a moderate hermeneutics, expressed through various debates involving Hirsch and Betti, Habermas, Derrida and Gadamer. Much of the debate focuses on Gadamer’s moderate hermeneutical position. It is Gadamer, in appropriating Heidegger’s reflections on being and understanding, who is primarily responsible for bringing hermeneutics to the fore as a universal concern. As we saw in previous chapters, Gadamer’s hermeneutics focuses on the ubiquity of interpretation, and on the contextual, historical and social nature of any interpretive situation. The interpreter is both constrained and enabled by historically situated prejudice. There are strands within Gadamer’s thought that seek to disable the force of the Enlightenment’s ‘prejudice against 101

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prejudice’, and to locate method and logic as subservient to rhetoric and dialogue. Gadamer’s understanding of the way interpretation proceeds invokes the metaphors of dialogue and play, and appropriates Aristotle’s concept of

phronesis (prudence, practical wisdom, tacit judgement) as the operative ‘intellectual virtue’ in understanding. Gallagher identifies three perplexities (aporias) around which the debates (between Hirsch and Betti, Habermas, Derrida and Gadamer) focus. The first is the issue of reproduction. Is it possible to objectively reproduce the meaning of a text? The debate has been chiefly between Betti, whose position is conservative, and Gadamer.

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According to conservative hermeneutics,

texts have meanings placed there by their authors. The role of the interpreter is to extract and reproduce that meaning. This involves breaking out of the constraints of one’s current historical situation. The approach is Cartesian, and involves the judicious application of method. Meaning is there to be uncovered. It is the task of scholarship to uncover it. There may be disagreement about what a text means. This is the nature of lively and scholarly debate. But meaning is unchanging. Hirsch supports Betti’s view of interpretation. According to Hirsch, the meaning of a text is constant, but the significance of the text changes. The significance of a text is what it means for us today.

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According to Gadamer, every attempt to interpret a text

produces a new meaning, a position Hirsch regards as relativistic. The second perplexity involves the question of authority and emancipation. According to Habermas, there is always something else going on outside of language that influences language.

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There is a frame of

reference that includes economic factors to do with labour, class and political factors of domination. These are the extralinguistic factors: social processes of domination, modes of production, and the ideas surrounding science and technology, such as progress.

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According to Habermas’s critical

hermeneutical perspective extralinguistic factors ‘always distort language, and therefore they distort ordinary interpretation and communication’.

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In

contrast, for Gadamer, even extralinguistic experience is mediated by language if it is to have any significance or effect. According to Habermas, Gadamer’s hermeneutics only focuses on language, and is therefore inadequate to the task of accounting for all understanding. Gadamer’s hermeneutics does not pay sufficient heed to the fact that it is necessary to engage in critical reflection to see through the distortions imposed by the political and power bases of the frame of reference. In response, Gadamer claims that there is 87

no privileged position from which we can achieve such emancipation. We are always constrained by the practice of our language community. According to Gadamer the issue always comes back to conversation. The third perplexity pertains to the nature of conversation. Here the debate is primarily between Derrida and Gadamer. For Gadamer the act of 102

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conversation requires the ‘good will’ of each party to understand the other. Derrida objects that the idea of ‘good will’ has its roots in Kant’s metaphysics.

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(As that branch of philosophy concerned with foundational

principles, metaphysics has been the subject of suspicion in Continental philosophy since Nietzsche.) To assert the primacy of conversation and the ability of the participants to be trusting and fair minded in the process is to imply a degree of control by the participants – to presume a kind of subjectivity. According to Derrida, everyone is aware, however, of the phenomenon of distorted communication. In characteristic fashion, Derrida 89

opposes Gadamer’s hermeneutics of trust with a hermeneutics of suspicion.

Trust implies a preservation of tradition. Suspicion, the centre of deconstruction, implies transformation. Gallagher, clearly on the side of Gadamer and the moderate view, holds that there are not three perplexities but one. These issues of reproduction, authority and conversation all come down to the problem of ‘ambiguity and the finitude of understanding’.

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According to Gallagher, the

truth about interpretation does not lie in the resolution of these perplexities, but in recognising ‘the fundamental ambiguity of interpretation’.

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How do

we address the problem of ambiguity? According to Gallagher, conservative theory seeks to deny or partition ambiguity, critical theory seeks to control it by disarming the power that generates it, radical theory celebrates and elevates it, and moderate theory acknowledges that we always have and will continue to generate and promote understandings according to the workings of the tacit norms and conventions of the interpretive communities within which we are situated, in spite of, and possibly because of, the play of ambiguity: Conservative theory wants to deny or fix ambiguity by the principle and canon of reproduction; critical theory seeks to rationalize and control it by neutralizing the effects of power, tradition, and authority; radical theory wants to radicalize it in the concept of play. Moderate theory, as we have called it, proposes to recognize that we cannot avoid ambiguity and therefore must not deny its 92

operation but find a way to live with it without inflating its effect.

Moderate hermeneutics According to Gallagher’s moderate position, these perplexities bring us back to the primacy of conversation and community, a theme developed by writers such as Kuhn, Rorty and Fish, and which we addressed in Chapter 1. Rorty applies to philosophy the view developed by Kuhn (and, from a different 103

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tradition, Foucault) of the dependence of science on the conversational, experimental, discursive and other practices of communities. He develops the theme of the primacy of conversation in philosophy. For Rorty the objective in philosophy is not to have the last word, rather it is to keep the conversation going. He posits this as a requirement of wisdom: ‘as consisting in the ability to sustain a conversation’.

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In a slightly different vein, Geertz asserts the 94

primacy of conversation over thinking. Thinking is primarily a public activity, realised in conversation. It is ‘consummately social: social in its origins, social in its functions, social in its form, social in its applications’.

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Private thinking

is a derivative mode of thought, analogous to the act of reading, which has only recently developed as a silent activity.

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According to Geertz, ‘thinking

as an overt, public act, involving the purposeful manipulation of objective materials, is probably fundamental to human beings; and thinking as a covert, private act, and without recourse to such materials a derived, though not unuseful, capability’.

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Bruffee applies Geertz’s argument to education. Our

thoughts have their source in some interpretive community. The educational corollary is that in order to think well we need to ‘think well collectively’.

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In

other words we need to converse well: We establish knowledge or justify belief collaboratively by challenging each other’s biases and presuppositions; by negotiating collectively toward new paradigms of perception, thought, feeling, and expression; and by joining larger, more experienced communities of knowledgeable peers through assenting to those communities’ interests, values, language, and paradigms of perception and thought.

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The conversational view of thought disarms conservative, reproductive views of knowledge. It also suggests new metaphors with which to describe the educational experience. According to Gallagher, ‘one never “has” knowledge; one participates in conversations at various interpretive sites’.

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The conversational view also says something about the critical

position. Critical discourse operates through the normal operations of interpretive communities. According to Gallagher, if ‘questioning or critical reflection is possible, it is only possible because one’s tradition, culture, and upbringing enable it’.

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What about abnormal discourse, radical discourse,

whose task it is to detect or sniff out ‘stale, unproductive knowledge’

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and

challenge the authority of the community? According to Bruffee there is no discipline that describes abnormal discourse. It is only possible to teach the tools of normal discourse. There is room for the abnormal, however, if we acknowledge that these tools are not universal. We should teach practical, normal skills in such a way that students ‘can turn to abnormal discourse in 104

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order to undermine their own and other people’s reliance on the canonical conventions and vocabulary of normal discourse’. The primacy of conversation and community therefore embraces the theme of radical pedagogy, recognising that radicalism requires a grounding in convention to operate. Radical education trades in the subversion of entrenched oppositions evident within a field of study, and plays on strange readings, the games of the lecriture. How does the moderate, conversational view account for this aspect of radical educational experience? From the point of view of moderate hermeneutics, such games are well situated within the conventions of interpretation. Any interpretive situation requires objectification. This is where something confronts the interpreter as alien, unfamiliar.

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The

objectification in interpretation ‘involves distance plus a collusion with the tradition-context of language’.

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The interpretive act is a negotiation across

this distance. Another way of looking at this phenomenon is to see the play of interpretation as rendering the familiar strange and the strange familiar.

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The educational experience provides the best example of this phenomenon. The teacher has a major role in presenting material as worthy of understanding. Paradoxically, this requires that there are elements of the material that are strange. For example, there are at least two possibilities in presenting historical material about the building of the Parthenon. First, if the student has never encountered classical Greek architecture before then it is a matter of presenting the material in such a way as to establish that there is a distance, a shortcoming in some knowledge, something worth knowing but not known. To establish relevance is precisely to establish this distance. The second case is where the student is immersed in the history, culture and mythology of the Parthenon. It is familiar. In such a case it may be appropriate to establish distance by questioning the entrenched myths, telling the story in a new way, possibly even undermining (or asserting) reverence for the building. In either case, a distancing is implicated in the process of understanding: in any instance of teaching, even when the teacher can assume that the student is in some way familiar with the subject matter, he still must make something stand out as unfamiliar, and he must call the student’s attention to precisely that which is unfamiliar. The teacher thus presents the subject matter, or one aspect of 106

the subject matter, as an unfamiliar object of learning.

We elaborate on this strategy in Chapter 7 (Design amnesia) where we consider history as a provocation to studio practice. As a further obvious example, our colleagues have designed the first year studio syllabus so that it leads students towards the design of a 105

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house, but it does so in a way that renders the design of a house strange, through a series of projects: the design of an eating place, a bath house, a house for an eccentric, and so on. The familiarity of the house is rendered strange by this fragmentation and renaming. Teaching requires opportunities for strange encounters. This commonly involves recognising and challenging aspects of the tradition in which the discourse is taking place: the teacher’s essential task is not simply to provide opinions, or insert information, but, working within traditional authoritative frameworks, to open up opportunities for such encounters, to help create the occasions in which the student will come into a 107

challenging relation to a particular tradition.

The contrasting position is that in which everything is taken as familiar. When we think that we understand then the play is finished.

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It signifies a

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‘foreclosure of learning’.

The radical educational experiments described above can be seen in this light. The deconstructive design studio involves rendering the familiar items of domestic life unfamiliar through the play of oppositions. But then this is normal design studio teaching practice. Successful learning situations are those in which the teacher is aiding the process by which objects are revealed, challenging that which the students take for granted, establishing distances, bringing out disparities between the students’ emerging practices and those of the teacher’s particular slice of the established interpretive community. What of the radical pedagogy that subverts the foundations even as it builds the foundations – teaching the unfoundational nature of professional practice? This is a common enough feature of the design studio (and, no doubt, other teaching forums), brought about in part by the inevitable plurality of views to which students are exposed. Over the course of an architectural education students are typically presented with a range of opinions, each presented with equal conviction by various teachers. From the point of view of the teacher, who may have forgotten what it was like to be a student, the knowledge structures may possibly take on the appearance of a monolithic and highly principled structure. But for the student there will always be a bewildering array of points of view, a situation that must at least hint of a ‘problem of foundations’ for the student. So the deconstructive awareness is always there, though often concealed within a confused relativism.

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The difference radical pedagogy makes is that it provides a new

possibility for conversation. It permits the problem of foundations to be discussed openly and realised as something that goes beyond the issues of foundationalism and relativism. Flux and play become new terms in the 106

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conversation. The subversion of foundations is not difficult to do, nor does it require a body of sophisticated theory, but it requires an interpretive community that gives legitimacy to such an activity, and brings the matter to crisis. This is abetted if the legitimacy resides within mainstream university and professional institutions, and has developed a highly influential vocabulary and literature. To this end, the discourse of deconstruction has great value.

The moderate response to calculative rationality in education The persistence of a conservative, calculative position in education is partly driven by a reaction against liberalism and relativism. To the conservative, the moderate hermeneutical position (as with liberalism and radicalism) bears the trappings of relativism. If the meanings of texts depend on what the interpretive community happens to be thinking at the time, and educational practice is an acculturation into a hermeneutical community, then the path is wide open for a plurality of competing and incommensurable viewpoints. But, worse than that, there is no authority by which we can adjudicate between them. In other words, ‘to have many standards is to have none at all’.

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This

perplexity is the ‘fine line’, the difference that radical and moderate hermeneutics makes: it is also where we get off the seesaw;

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it is where

one says – ‘it is missing the point to think that embracing the primacy of interpretive communities is to hand our deliberations over to relativism’. The response of Stanley Fish, the advocate of a moderate hermeneutics, to the fact of having many (or no) standards for adjudication is to say it is ‘really of no importance’.

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According to Fish, everyone is situated somewhere, and

the lack of an ‘asituational norm’ is really of no consequence: ‘So while it is generally true that to have many standards is to have none at all, it is not true for anyone in particular (for there is no one in a position to speak “generally”), and therefore it is a truth of which one can say “it doesn’t matter”’.

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No one can be a relativist, because no one can achieve the distance from his own beliefs and assumptions which would result in their being no more authoritative for him that the beliefs and assumptions held by others, or, for that matter, the beliefs and assumptions he himself used to hold. The fear that in a world of indifferently authorized norms and values the individual is without a basis for action is groundless because no one is indifferent to the norms and values that enable his consciousness.

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We return to the issue of how to deal with design standards in the next chapter. The attack on relativism is a major theme of post-modern writing. To advocate relativism is to give primacy and permanence to the elusive subject. Deconstruction and hermeneutics incorporate challenges to the existing tradition, but also posit new metaphors with which to account for understanding that do not resort to either objectivism/foundationalism, or subjectivism/relativism. The notion of play alluded to earlier is one attempt to decentre subjectivity, to strike a blow to both foundationalism and relativism, 116

and to extricate thought from the Cartesian anxiety.

How then do we address the instrumental concern for rigour and the maintenance of standards? On the subject of rigour, the notion of the primacy of interpretive communities affords full support to the conservative’s concern with professional competence. Where the moderate parts company with the conservative is in the ‘meaning reverence’ accorded to normative texts: texts that seek to capture knowledge and define competencies. By focusing on the communities that generate and use such documents, the 117

moderate has greater access to what is going on.

From the viewpoint of moderate hermeneutics, these documents become a part of current discursive practice. The moderate is wise to the strengths and limitations of texts, and the political and power contexts in which they are used. Whereas the conservative has to submit her understanding of what is going on in the community to the letter of the text, the moderate knows that no normative text has any force other than what the community allows – what the community is prepared to accept and interpret (that is, to apply). There are many examples where reverence for a text obscures the practices of an interpretive community. One example is the use of the term ‘integration’ to describe what should happen in architectural education – according to this view the curriculum should be put together in such a way that the subject matter is integrated into what constitutes an effective and coherent education for an architect. Problems in the curriculum are commonly attributed to poor integration. But the rhetoric of integration can mask the problem of relevance. Commonly, subject matter is not simply poorly integrated, it is just not particularly relevant, or not taught in a way relevant to being a professional. But the banner of integration can also obscure an important feature of the life of interpretive communities. The call for integration masks the possibility that education may in fact be a fragmented affair, full of discontinuities, unrelated bodies of theory and skills, perplexities, incommensurable fields of study, and contradictions – all unconnected and barely related. It may even be the case that it is through this discontinuous matrix that learning occurs.

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Chapter 5

Ethics and practice

Figure captions (clockwise from top left ) 1–3

Making in the design studio and workshop

Chapter 5

Ethics and practice

‘Theorising Architectural Education’ is the title given to one of the sessions in a conference on architectural education held in the Faculty of Architecture at Sydney University. The title may seem innocuous, but this depends on how the term ‘theory’ is construed. In a commonly held sense, theory is thought of as providing rules for practical action. Theory maps out general principles, which are then applied in particular situations. The concomitant notion is that correct practice is determined by correct theory. We assert that if ‘theory’ is taken with these connotations, then it is not innocuous, but veils a threat to design studio education. This threat does not lie in the prospect of a revival of the discredited ‘analysis, synthesis, evaluation’ model of design teaching, in which rule-based practice governed all studio activity. Nor does it relate to the inability of academics working in design studios to justify their pedagogical procedures when these are challenged. It inheres, rather, in the possibility of an erosion of the ethical aspects of the teaching and practice of design. 1

This chapter proposes a kenning of the relationship of theory and practice that brings the ethical components of the design process into awareness, so that they can be preserved and reinforced. In this short chapter we revisit our exposition of ‘theory’ (theoria) begun in Chapter 2 (Playing by the rules), and ‘practice’ (praxis), and then explore the implications for architectural education. First, what is ‘practice’? The word comes from the Greek praxis, but for the Greeks this term did not refer to what we now call ‘practice’, that is, the application in action of rules and principles provided in advance by 111

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theory. This latter meaning of the term corresponds to what the Greeks termed techne, which is the making of something in accordance with

episteme, ‘knowledge’, and more specifically knowledge that is consciously known, and can be directly communicated to others. Episteme is a knowledge that pre-exists the activity of making; and techne, from which our words ‘technique’ and ‘technology’ derive, is the application of episteme in an act of producing something that answers to a prescribed need. The relationship of

episteme to techne is thus close to that which is now commonly ascribed to ‘theory’ and ‘practice’. For the Greeks, praxis, in contrast to techne, is an activity involving judgement. It is the making of ethical decisions by the exercise of phronesis (Chapter 2), that is, ‘practical reasonableness,’ acting by way of tacit understandings gained from experience and within a context of ethical behaviour, by which was meant behaviour that is conducive to the well-being of oneself and others.

Phronesis is an understanding of what to do when placed in a particular, concrete situation. It is the faculty that comes into play when we make judgements about what action is to be taken when confronted with the necessity to act. Most importantly for what follows, it is inseparable from ethics and from our involvements in a society. Phronesis has an inherently ethical aspect, since the making of judgements concerning courses of action entail consequences that bear upon the welfare, the well-being, the good life of ourselves and others. In the Greek understanding of the term, therefore, praxis is not the application of episteme, but the exercise of phronesis. There is another Greek term that conveys similar connotations, namely prohairesis. Prohairesis is the exercise of choice between various things or courses of action.

Prohairesis is at one and the same time a preferring and a choosing. The preferred is chosen, and it is preferred because there is an anticipation of the social and ethical consequences of the choice.

Prohairesis entails responsibility for decisions. If our decisions go wrong we are to accept responsibility in admitting that we should have known better, or could have acquired a better understanding. It also involves ‘solidarity’, as defined by Gadamer and the pragmatists, namely, a sense of authentic community and ‘mutual agreement’, an awareness that we are members of a community and that our actions are either conducive to the general good, or are not. These alternatives to the currently pervasive notions of what practice is, are matched by related interpretations of ‘theory’. For the Greeks

theoria is not something that precedes praxis, nor is it the repository of the rules and principles governing action. It is, rather, a participation in practice. This meaning is embedded in the Greek word theoria itself. As Gadamer 112

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points out, theoria comes from theoros, ‘spectator’. The ‘spectators’ were a delegation sent to a festival honouring the gods. These spectators were not merely onlookers, but took part and shared in the event. The spectators, the theorists, were participants in the rituals, and could attest to their efficacy by having taken part in them and directly experienced them.

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For the Greeks, therefore, theoria does not precede or stand apart from praxis, but participates in it. In this understanding, theory does not tend, as in techno-rationalism, to fragmentation and disassociation from practice, 3

but to fusion and association.

A distinction can thus be set up between practical choices made by the exercise of phronesis and those made on the basis of technical knowledge. Technical ‘choice’ is the determination, by means of pre-given rules, of the best way in which to achieve a pre-given end. The choice is made by a conscious calculation, preferably mathematical. Any consideration of the ethical and social consequences of the choice comes after the event, as an afterthought, ancillary to action. A practical choice, by contrast, is one taken in an ethical and social context, and is inseparable from ethical and social considerations. These are inbuilt into the process of choosing. The chooser chooses in the context of what is due to him or herself, to others, and – with particular reference to sustainability – what is due to the total environment in which we live. No technical knowledge can provide us with these choices, because there are no rules that determine the choice. To make choices in accordance with practical reason is to draw on a sense of responsibility. Responsibility is a response, an answering, to what is owing to others, and an acceptance that actions impact on one’s own life and future, the life and future of other humans, and the life and future of the whole globe. These notions of theory and practice as entwined with ethics and communal solidarity have been obscured by techno-rationality. Praxis has been totally subsumed within techne, so that the problems confronting us, and particularly those of sustainability of the environment and our social fabric, are the province of technical experts (experts in techne), those who command the formulae for structuring phenomena and thereby determining action. We look to the technical experts to direct our actions, and thereby deny our own practical, ethical and political experience. As a corollary, techno-rationalist theory tends to see the world exclusively in terms of mathematical, which is to say, abstract relations, so that theory becomes the handmaiden of quantification, and aims for the attainment of quantifiable results. Theory subjects all decision-making to the criterion of ‘efficiency’, which is defined exclusively in terms of utilitarian, quantitative and, increasingly, monetary outcomes. 113

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These are familiar laments and we won’t labour the point, except to stress the obvious, that theory and practice, in the techno-rationalist kenning of those terms, now have almost total hegemony in universities. We say ‘almost total’ because there do exist small backwaters in which remnants of

praxis and theoria still exist, albeit unwittingly, or spaces in which theoria and praxis, with their concomitants, phronesis and prohairesis, could exist. One such backwater is the design studio. The design studio as it currently operates, for all its manifest faults and failings, is an engagement in

praxis by way of exercising phronesis and prohairesis. It would be difficult to find a better definition of ‘design’ than that of

prohairesis, namely, ‘a decision-making according to one’s own responsibility’. Designing is a design-ating, pointing to this rather than that, and thus making a choice from among possible alternatives. At its best, design as decisionmaking involves phronesis and prohairesis. It is a practice by way of tacit understandings that choose courses of action with a sense of responsibility. The design studio is, or is potentially, the site for the development of a true praxis, as contrasted with the teaching of techne. Donald Schön showed that the one-to-one interaction between tutor and student constitutes a hermeneutical dialogue. He did not, however, to our knowledge, explore the functioning of the design studio as the potential site for praxis as participation, the development of a sense of social responsibility or ethical decision-making and doing. We are suggesting that rather than looking for more efficient ways of doing design teaching, that is, of searching for theories of architectural design that will supposedly make it more efficient or productive, we look with attention to the way the design studio presently operates, to get a better understanding of how the processes of decision-making operate now, and to see how its inherent exercise of practical and responsible reasoning can be enhanced. We are proposing a hermeneutical exploration of the nature of

praxis in the design studio. Here ‘exploration’ is not thought of as taking the design studio as an ‘object’ for scrutiny, analysis or experimentation in the manner of rationalist science, but in the original sense conveyed by the word ‘explore’, from ex-pluere, ‘to flow from’, that is to say, a spontaneous ‘flowing out’, a revealing or disclosure that takes place in dialogue. Exploration, in this 4

context, is allowing the disclosure to take place of its own accord. This is to act as theorists, spectators who are involved and participate in what they view, allowing it to reveal aspects of its own reality. There is a need to explore the processes of involvement, participation, dialogue, play, responsibility and judgement within the design studio, so as to gain understanding of their workings and as forms of praxis 5

to supersede or counterbalance competition, confrontation and debate, and 114

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as expedients to minimise training for merely utilitarian, economic and rationalist imperatives. If the design studio is to have a future, studio practitioners must learn the knack of the decisive making of choices that are ingrained with an understanding of responsibility and social solidarity. It is demonstrable that this is not going to come from the techno-rationalist approaches to pedagogy. The praxis inhering in the design studio could be revealed by encouraging dialogue, group participation, the expansion and fusions of horizons of experience, by engaging hermeneutically with the social and environmental impact of design decisions, in short by establishing a design forum in which students exercise, and thus strengthen, their practical understanding. By contrast, what should be resisted is the pressure to turn the teaching of design over to techno-rationalism, to those who claim they can make the teaching of design into an efficient, objectively assessable, outcomeoriented, quantifiable, techno-rational or rule-based exercise. The attacks that are mounted against the design studio on the score that its theoretical principles are undefined, uncertain, unformulaic and irrational, simply miss the point. Rather than looking for ways to replace the design studio with a ‘rigorous’ method, we should, on the contrary, look for ways to resist the inroads of ‘theorisation’. This is not to deny the very important role the technical aspects of design must continue to play as tools and mechanisms within the total 6

spectrum of the design process. To plead for a place in the sun for praxis is not to deny such a place for techne. Technical expertise cannot be denied. What is questioned here is its appropriation of all other modes of thinking and action, with the concomitant possibility of the fulfilment of Heidegger’s prophecy of the total, or totalitarian, hegemony of techno-rationalism and our forgetting of all other modes of thought and practice.

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Chapter 6

Design assessment

Figure captions (clockwise from top left ) 1–2

Designer and jurors in a design review (crit)

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A local gathering in Avila, Spain. Sensus communis from the back

Chapter 6

Design assessment

A common lament is that the assessment of design is insufficiently objective, that rigorous standards of assessment are lacking in studio critiques. Interpretation theory, however, shows objectivity to be an impossibility. On the other hand, if we concede that assessment is subjective, then it presents as mere opinion, subject to the vagaries and whims of the assessor. If objectivity is a chimera, and subjectivity anarchic, how is fair assessment possible? The assessment process seems to be mysterious and inexplicable. The problem, it will be argued here, lies in the subject–object model of assessment used to describe it. As is every descriptive model, the subject–object model of design assessment is a metaphor, and in the manner of metaphor obscures certain aspects of its referent at the same time as it reveals others; and it is enabling or disabling to the degree that it is conducive 1

or obstructive to practice. The subject–object metaphor of design assessment obscures more than it reveals and is disabling rather than enabling in that it holds out the promise that practice can be improved by compiling criteria lists and establishing procedural rules, whereas in practice these strategies are unproductive, time-consuming and inevitably confusing. Fortunately, however, the subject–object metaphor is not the only one available to describe the relationship between the design and the assessor; an alternative metaphor is that of a text and its reader, that is, a hermeneutical metaphor. In this kenning, the design is analogous to a text in that its meaning is to be understood and interpreted; and assessors are analogous to readers of texts in that they evaluate the design by interpreting its meanings. Drawing on the insights disclosed by hermeneutical philosophy concerning the nature and functioning of interpretation, this metaphor renders 119

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redundant many of the problems arising from the objectivity–subjectivity controversy by disclosing the inadequacies and disabling obscurations inhering within the subject–object metaphor. Looking at some of these in turn, the subject–object metaphor of design assessment assumes, first, that the design being assessed is an object which stands apart from the assessing subject and as if in isolation from a context. In the hermeneutical metaphor, by contrast, the assessor and the design do not stand apart, but interact, and this interaction takes place within a context. Design evaluation, in this metaphor, is literally circum-stantial. It takes place in an interpretational space that surrounds the design and the assessor, and is influenced by the many factors that operate within that space. This new metaphor enables a radically altered understanding of what happens when two assessors disagree on the value of a design. Hermeneutical theory posits that when two readers give different interpretations of a text it is not immediately to be assumed that one or the other is misreading its meaning. It may well be that they are reading it in situations involving different circumstances, or that they have come to the event of interpretation with different horizons of anticipation. So, likewise, widely divergent evaluations of a design are not to be ascribed to the correctness or incorrectness of the assessments, but to the fact that the ways in which the assessors read the value and meaning of a design are inseparably connected with the situation in which it is encountered and with the preconceptions the assessor brings to the situation.

Designs and value The subject–object metaphor assumes, additionally, that what the assessor evaluates is a value that the design possesses. Value is thought of as belonging to the design in the manner in which properties such as weight or colour belong to an object. The assessor, by this account, examines and judges values such as technical efficiency and artistic merit as if they inhered within the design. The hermeneutical metaphor dismantles this assumption. The design does not possess value; value does not inhere within the design prior to its assessment; value arises, rather, in the assessment situation, which involves an interaction of the design with innumerable other factors, such as the preconceptions of the assessor, the particularities of the design exercise, the conditions of assessment, and its importance within a professional or pedagogical context. On the other hand, values are not something belonging to the assessors. They do not ‘have’ values that in some mysterious way they project onto the design, nor do they assess the design by measuring it against the 120

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values they supposedly ‘hold’. Value does not reside in the design or in the assessor, but results from an interplay of variables in the total assessment situation. The design itself and the prejudices of its assessors are only some of the many factors that play into the evaluation process. Neither the design’s meanings nor the assessor’s preconceptions are pre-given absolutes, but are both transformed in the complex interactions of the interpretational situation. The evaluation of a design, which is a reading of its meanings, is analogous to the interpretation of the meanings or ‘values’ of words, which are not fixed and precise, but dependent on their context, in which innumerable 2

factors other than the linguistic play a part. A word does not carry a single, fixed meaning in itself so as to demand to be understood in a particular way regardless of when and where it is encountered. Its meanings are variable and contingent on the particular circumstances in which it occurs. As the situation changes, so also does the meaning. We hear words with expectations of meaning deriving from past experience and picked up from cues in the situation. These anticipations form a horizon; the word stands in a horizon constituted by its context within language and within situated action; and 3

meaning arises from the interactive fusion of the two horizons.

Words only have value in a field of interactions; similarly, design values only exist as part of a network of variables interacting in an interpretational situation. The values ascribed to design properties are not stable, but change as the field of interpretation and evaluation changes, just as the monetary value of gold rises and falls with the interaction of market forces or the value of a chess piece changes with the relative positions of all the pieces on the chessboard. Design value is impermanent and precarious; it cannot be accurately specified; it has no abiding self-nature other than as the consequence of an ever-changing play of evaluative interpretations; it is wholly dependent on context.

Tacit understanding It might be objected, however, that these arguments still allow the possibility of an unrestrained play of merely individual whim in assessing design value. What guarantee is there that the assessor’s preconceptions do not simply take over and overrule all other factors playing in the situation? Are there not cases when an assessor’s prejudice is so strong that it dominates all other considerations? The refutation of the errors implicit in this line of questioning relies on the assertion that evaluation never is, nor ever can be, exclusively personal and private. On the contrary, evaluation is predominantly communal. 121

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Admittedly, each assessor brings to the event of assessment 4

individual forestructures of prejudice. This could not be otherwise, since the specificity of one’s forestructures, resulting from one’s individual history and 5

experience, are constitutive of one’s very being. Every interpretation of a design, therefore, will be to some extent personal and idiosyncratic. Nevertheless, each assessor also brings societally constituted forestructures, shared with those having similar historical and experiential backgrounds. These communal preconceptions are far stronger than the personal. Assessors share forestructures of understanding with professional colleagues; their attitudes, opinions and orientations regarding design do not emerge solely from individual sources, but result from their common training and experience. They belong to a design culture and understand a design ‘language’, analogous to spoken language in that it structures modes of understanding and action and is intelligible to each because they have all been through the same learning processes. The ability to understand and communicate in a spoken language grants admittance to a language community, and just in the same way facility in a design language gives access to a design community. Membership in such a community presupposes certain predispositions in thought, attitudes and actions, resulting from a shared professional training. Members of a community of practitioners have forestructures of understanding in common; and they thus form what will here be called a ‘hermeneutical community’, 6

meaning a group that shares certain modes of interpretation.

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To share modes of interpretation is to share tacit understandings, 8

forestructures that are learned not by rules or formulae, but by words accompanied by demonstration in concrete examples and by practice in specific situations. A hermeneutical community is made up of those who have internalised tacit understandings by undergoing a specific course of training, those who have practised what Kuhn calls the ‘finger exercises’ that constitute 9

‘a process of professional initiation’. The members of such a community share a practical understanding, learned by doing, which enables them to go beyond a mere application of learned rules and to respond immediately and without thinking to a situation, discerning its most relevant features, what additional information is needed, the right questions to ask, the relevant precedents, and so on. As we examined in Chapter 2, such a practical understanding is not merely knowledge of algorithmic formulae, but is an indwelling ‘know-how’, an immediate grasp of the appropriate gesture to make in response to a practical situation. The development of tacit understanding, which is training in the skills of a hermeneutical community, is a process of absorbing and internalising experience, so that it is not something external that can be used in the manner of a tool. 122

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Rather than practitioners possessing tacit understanding, it

Design assessment

possesses them, since it directs their thoughts and actions. Training and practice influence the way professionals interpret things in the world. Having been educated in and absorbed the tacit conventions of practice, their attitudes and practical actions are structured by those conventions.

Tacit understanding of design value The tacit understandings of a hermeneutical community include a tacit understanding of norms and evaluative practices. Thus the initiates of the design community have internalised design criteria and rules for their application during the course of their training and practical experience. This tacit understanding of design value and how to assess it comes into play every time a design is evaluated. An assessor, therefore, is not free to choose or create evaluations with a total lack of inhibition, but only within the limits posed by the design community’s tacit understandings of what constitutes good design. The assessor’s anticipations and pre-understandings concerning design values are only partially personal and idiosyncratic; for the greater part they are shared with other members of the community of design practitioners. The assessor is guided by inbuilt communal values.

Does assessment need rules? Design evaluation, therefore, is not free or haphazard; it is limited by the tacit understandings of the hermeneutic community of designers; and it is not haphazard because the assessor has acquired a tacit understanding of design value and how it is assessed, a complex set of tacit norms, processes, criteria and procedural rules, forming part of a practical know-how. From the time of their first ‘crit’, design students are absorbing design values and learning how the assessment process works; by the time they graduate, this learning has become tacit understanding, something that every practitioner implicitly understands more or less well. An absence of defined criteria and procedural rules does not, therefore, give free rein to merely individual responses, since these have already been structured within the framework of what is taken as significant and valid by the design community. An absence of objectivity does not result in uncontrolled licence, since the assessor is conforming to unspoken rules that, more or less unconsciously, constrain interpretation and evaluation. If not so constrained, the assessor would not be a member of the hermeneutical community, and would therefore have no authority to act as an assessor. 123

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Assessors do not need to consult explicit rules for assessment because the rules are internalised and have become an integral part of their way of understanding design. They are not entirely free to abide by the rules or not as they think fit, since norms are deeply embedded in their professional and personal make-up. Understanding how to assess design is part of a design practitioner’s professional savvy. Conscious deliberation on the value of a design does not therefore function as if independently and in self-enclosed isolation, but is subsequent to an immediate and spontaneous evaluation. Deliberative processes are themselves also grounded in the tacit understandings of the hermeneutical community. Deliberation on the merits or demerits of a design comes after the event of evaluation, and must then conform to pre-given frames of interpretation. The hermeneutical metaphor thus negates the mutually exclusive opposition of objectivity and subjectivity. If assessment is not objective it does not inevitably follow that it must then necessarily be subjective and therefore irrational, emotional and arbitrary. To negate objectivity is not to affirm 11

subjectivity. Both are dispensable.

In sum, the subject–object metaphor gives an inadequate account of design assessment. It creates illusory problems and obstructs the disclosure of more viable and revealing metaphors. The confusions and insecurities associated with design assessment are not inherent within the assessment situation, but have their source in an obscuring and obstructing trope.

Rules and the hermeneutical community Design assessment is neither objective nor subjective; it does not proceed by reference to fixed criteria and procedural rules; nor is it, except retrospectively, a process of conscious deliberation. It is, rather, inextricably embedded in design practice, proceeding by way of tacit understandings of value acquired in professional training and applied in specific situations. This does not mean that explicitly formulated design criteria and procedural rules are wholly irrelevant and negligible, but that when viewed in the light of the hermeneutical metaphor they are no longer seen as universal and static templates against which value is measured, but are, rather, heuristic, situational, fluid expedients.

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Experienced assessors will not require a formulation of criteria, 13

since they already know how to evaluate design. Explicit criteria add nothing to their understanding. If, by contrast, criteria and procedural rules are specified, the assessor’s tacit know-how structures the way in which they 124

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are interpreted. Evaluative criteria are themselves subject to evaluation in accordance with the norms and practices of the hermeneutical community. Even when fixed in formulae, design criteria and procedural rules are fluid in practice, since practice cannot be fixed and predicted. Each new assessment situation requires a revised interpretation, which is to say a new version, of the criteria and the rules. The meanings of the rules change in the event of their application. There is no point at which it can be said, now the rule is fixed. Quite on the contrary, assessors will show they understand the rule by being able to apply it appropriately in different circumstances, thus showing that the rule has been internalised. This is not a matter of the rule having been expanded or made so explicit as to cover all cases or that the rule has given rise to understanding, but that the assessor’s understanding now renders the rule meaningful so that it can be adapted to every new situation. The members of a hermeneutical community may possess and use formulated rules, but in their practical application these rules function in the manner of general principles, rules-of-thumb, heuristic devices, which are only intelligible because they are part of a complex reticulated field of interactions. Further, as outlined in Chapter 2 (Playing by the rules), explicitly formulated criteria and procedural rules are only understood if and when used in a practical situation. The rules can never be sufficiently explicit to tell the assessor what to do in every case; and, by the same token, what the assessor has learned by experience cannot be expressed in a set of rules. The rules have no meaning except in relation to practice; but this does not mean that practice is arbitrary or ad hoc, but on the contrary it is always regulated, since in its working out it follows an understanding of how things work in practice. Even if this understanding can be formalised in rules, it doesn’t work according to the rules, but according to the exigencies of practice. The ability to understand criteria and rules in and by their application is an inextricable part of design practice. It presupposes a tacit understanding of the total situation in which the rules are applied, the actions to be taken and the decisions to be made. In the case of evaluation in a pedagogical situation, for example, the ability to apply design criteria intelligently presupposes a prior tacit understanding that locates the evaluation in a total context that includes such matters as the educational aims of the design exercise, the level of the students’ design education, and the effects of the evaluation on students’ morale, scholarly records and status. It also presupposes a tacit knowledge of what information the assessor requires to understand the assessment situation, what questions he or she should ask in order to locate the criteria within the context of his or her pre-assumptions and practical experience, so that they can be applied with intelligent understanding, and so on.

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When assessors differ If a design’s worth is not in the design itself but in a play of covert understandings, what possible appeal exists for those who feel their work has been unfairly judged? The answer requires a recognition, first, that disagreements among assessors over the value of a design do not occur because objectivity, rationality and logic have been overridden by irrationality, illogic and knee-jerk subjectivity, but because of differences in interpretation; and second, that agreement is reached not by resort to objectivity, rationality and logic, but by an appeal to the shared norms and criteria of the hermeneutical community. Differences in assessment are judged in the same manner as designs are, that is, by reference to the tacit understandings of the assessors who, as members of the same hermeneutical community, share certain norms, values and attitudes, which not only pose limits to disagreement but form a base, the only one possible, for consensus. Agreement is reached by way of questioning, negotiation and discussion which, to the degree they relate to design assessment, are hermeneutical skills acquired along with other tacit understandings in the course of professional training. Disputes, in sum, are settled by argument and ‘talk’,

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which is to say, by the power of rhetoric,

proceeding by way of persuasion,

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which argues matters primarily by

appeal to the tacit understandings of the design culture, to pre-understandings which are so deeply embedded that they are for the most part not conscious but taken for granted. It argues by reference to shared tacit criteria, to shared anticipations of what constitutes good design. Those who are convinced that their work has been unfairly assessed thus have as one recourse the option of joining in the argument and employing the rhetoric of the design culture to relocate their work in the interpretational situation and to show new aspects that might have been overlooked, that is, to draw out new interpretational possibilities.

Authoritarian assessment and common sense There are situations, however, when talk may seem fruitless. What if the assessor is an authoritarian despot, who wields power for power’s sake or on the basis of an ad hominem hostility? Here the appeal must be to some other legitimate authority. But what is legitimate authority? The ultimate authority in a hermeneutical community is the tacit understanding that guides, structures and limits the evaluations made by its members. Shared modes of authority, deriving from shared modes of interpretation and evaluation, bind together the members of a hermeneutical 126

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community and form its sensus communis, which is both its common sense and sense in common, a sense which is never fully expressed nor ever fully expressible, but which nevertheless is authoritative in that it controls the actions and outlook of its members. Common sense, a shared body of interpretational values, constrains the assessor’s evaluations, since the assessment must always be made by reference to what the hermeneutical community accepts as common sense. Institutionalised, common sense legitimates an assessor’s exercise of evaluative authority. Institutions, such as professional and academic bodies, are the embodiments of the shared tacit understandings and the common sense of a hermeneutical community and thus represent the authority of its attitudes, norms and practices. They bestow this authority by delegating members to speak on their behalf. The authority of design assessors is therefore not their own but is invested in them by the hermeneutical community. When they no longer represent the tacit understandings of the community, they lose their claims to legitimate authority and become authoritarian. Authoritarian assessors are those who refuse to talk or listen, who will not discuss the validity of their evaluations. Talk is disclosive; discussion, questioning and argument reveal unseen aspects of the assessment situation, opening up alternative interpretations and new ways of seeing. Without talk, disclosure stops; and without disclosure agreement is impossible. Talk discloses the tacit understandings of a hermeneutical community; it brings them from a tacit and closed state to explicit articulation,

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so that they can

be examined, tested and evaluated, and thus accepted, modified or rejected. The disclosive function of talk thus ensures the continuing authority of the

sensus communis by opening it up to testing. Assessors who will not open up their evaluations to questioning are refusing to measure their own tacit prejudgements and preconceptions against those of the hermeneutical community. In this they deny the authority of the community, and the possibility of other versions of that authority. They cannot then claim to be speaking on behalf of the community and thus relinquish their legitimate authority. The authoritarian assessor speaks for him or herself, not as the delegated representative of a community. Are tacit understandings and the sensus communis of a hermeneutical community the only basis of authority? What, then, of the authority of rational logic, of what Toulmin calls ‘intellectual authority’, ‘the authority exerted by arguments that make their way simply by virtue of a superior rationality and do not depend for their impact on the lines of power 19

and influence operating in an institution’?

Disagreements over value, or anything else for that matter, are not resolved by rational logic. Argument proceeds by way of tacit understandings. 127

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Only certain arguments and certain ways of presenting arguments are considered logical or even rational by a hermeneutical community.

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Logic is

situated; it is subject to the same processes of evaluation as is value itself. The force of logic is determined and limited by the same tacit understandings and interpretational modes that operate in any assessment situation. The argument cannot take place outside the arena defined by the pre-assumptions shared by the hermeneutical community. Rational logic cannot stand in isolation. Rational arguments are advanced in a context that is already reticulated by networks of authority constituted by such factors as the scholarly prestige, academic position, publishing record, and so forth of those advancing the arguments. These factors of power and authority prestructure the debate, determining its limiting parameters, the arguments that are deemed rational, the themes that are relevant, the references that are acceptable, and so forth. The ‘intellectual authority’ of an argument is a matter not of cohesive and internally consistent logic or rationality, but of how it fits into the pre-existing interpretational complex. The exercise of intellectual authority is subject to the same forming and limiting processes of tacit understanding and the sensus communis as are any other practices within a hermeneutical community. This is not to deny rationality but to recognise that it is neither autonomous nor privileged, that there is more than one form of rationality, and that the intellectual authority of rationality is only one factor among many that interact in a hermeneutical situation. Similar considerations apply to procedures for arbitrating over disputed points of view, the authority accorded to the arbitrator, the manner in which people agree to differ, defer or adopt a judgement, or the way a judgement is delivered and propagated, subject to caveats and reconsiderations, 21

the whole agonistic apparatus of the aporia.

In sum, those who think they have been assessed arbitrarily or unjustly cannot prove their case by rational logic alone, but must have recourse to rhetorical persuasion or else to a higher authority, which means an appeal to delegates who represent the authority of the hermeneutical community and 22

express its shared tacit understandings and standards.

The profession as a hermeneutical community The notion of professional institutions as embodiments of the authority of hermeneutical communities might be supposed to lend legitimacy to entrenched power élites and to a reactionary conformism. The denial of this supposition hinges on interpretations of the term ‘professional’, which can either be taken as an honorific, carrying connotations of competence, of knowing what to do in a practical situation, of being conversant with recent 128

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developments in an area of knowledge, and of being thoroughly versed in the current practices of a hermeneutical community; or, on the other hand, can be taken as a pejorative, with connotations of a self-serving and conspiratorial faction that employs impenetrable jargon to exclude the uninitiated laity, to monopolise areas of specialist knowledge and associated privileges, and to protect the status quo. The hermeneutical metaphor favours neither reading. It simply points out the existence of hermeneutical communities. The tacit understandings that underpin them, when brought to surface consciousness, are open to evaluation argued by rhetoric. The sensus communis of a hermeneutical community is neither sacrosanct nor beyond criticism. Quite on the contrary, the common sense that drives a community may be wholly wrong and, as far as this is possible since tacit understandings are tacit, must be disclosed and subjected to an ever-vigilant scrutiny and continuing discussion. This, however, can only be conducted by reference to tacit understandings, leading to the paradoxical conclusion that the current sensus

communis can only be changed by appeal to that very same sensus communis. This is to acknowledge that tacit understandings are essential to any explicit understanding. They are constitutive of the forestructures we bring to any understanding of the arguments of another, and without them understanding would not be possible. There can be no question of eliminating hermeneutical communities, nor of dismantling their authority, since any deconstruction of old forestructures is simultaneously a construction of new forestructures, the replacement of one set of tacit attitudes, norms and practices with another. Even if their boundaries change as tacit understandings change, hermeneutical communities and the authority they carry are embedded in the very nature of what it means to be a social being.

Conclusion In conclusion, and returning to the main theme, the procedures of design evaluation do not need external criteria or rules to constrain them. Constraints are inherent within the design community’s tacit understandings of what design is, what it does, and what it should be. Assessors, participating in the outlook, language and practices of the design culture, know in a general way how to go about the task of evaluation without recourse to preordained formulae, just as they know in a general way the limits to acceptable evaluation and legitimate authority. Design assessors for the most part do not have difficulty in reaching agreement on the value of a design without needing to refer to lists 129

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of criteria, procedural rules or other objective (or for that matter, subjective) standards, but, according to Fish, are simply ‘doing what comes naturally’. There is nothing disorderly or irrational in this. Order and rationality do not depend on specific criteria or strict rules. The assessor’s evaluation of a design is a mode of interpretation, inseparable from the way the design institutions and the design community interpret designs and understand designing. This shared way of interpretation, not external criteria or governing rules, puts limits to judgement and validates the rationality of the assessment procedure. To deny the possibility of objectivity in design evaluation is not to deny the existence of constraints. These are not external to the evaluation process, however, but lie embedded within it, in the form of a common sense that determines what is and what is not acceptable as meaningful and relevant at this time and in these circumstances. This sense is not random or unprincipled, since it can always be partially disclosed and questioned; nor is it ‘subjective’, since it does not belong to nor originate in any individual, but is shared by the hermeneutical community. These arguments are not intended to support the status quo, or to suggest that the interpretive modes presently shared by an interpretive community are beyond criticism. Quite on the contrary, the arguments are based on a recognition that whatever remains static and unchanging is antithetical to creativity. To the extent that they can be brought to explicit formulation, tacit understandings should be opened up to an ever-renewed questioning and argumentation, and be the focus of continuing talk. To disclose new aspects of the world, emphases and orientations must be continually re-articulated, allowing new metaphors to emerge and disclose previously hidden facets of reality. The dangers of this are precisely the same as those which forever threaten democratic processes: not the possibility that objectivity will give way to an unprincipled subjectivity, but that dialogue – free talk – may be stifled.

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This is less likely to happen in an intellectual environment that

recognises the interpretational nature of practice than in one where it is believed that human actions and behaviour work according to immutable laws which can be formulated as rules for constraining human actions. Assessment procedures are not haphazard or fumbling. They work within constraints tacitly inherent within the interpretive context. The assessment process can work successfully without the need for explicit criteria in the great majority of cases because the assessors are not judging according to individual whim, but from within a field of forestructures based on and deriving from training and practical experience.

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Chapter 7

Design amnesia

Figure captions (clockwise from top left ) 1

British museum redevelopment: Foster and Partners. In remembrance of history

2

Paternosta Square, London. Masterplan Architects: Whitfield Partners

3

Natural History Museum, London. Architects: Alfred Waterhouse and Francis Fowke, opened in 1881

Chapter 7

Design amnesia

How can architectural history and the design studio be integrated? This is a question that 15 teachers of history working in design schools in the UK attempt to answer in essays collected by Hardy and Teymur in their book, Architectural 1

History and the Design Studio. The 15 authors, with certain provisos, all agree that integration is desirable, but their various solutions to the problem of how it might be achieved are divergent and unconvincing. The divergence in the proffered panaceas for reintegration mirrors the different ways the authors view the proper role of architectural history in the design schools. Nowhere in Hardy and Teymur’s book is it suggested that the role of architectural history should be the mere cataloguing and description of buildings, following the model of Sir Bannister Fletcher’s ‘comparative method’; nor does any one of the writers propose that the role of history is to provide precedents to aid students in the design studio. They variously describe the role of architectural history as locating architecture in its social and cultural milieu; disclosing, in the manner of critical theory, the dynamics of social and political agendas hidden beneath seemingly benign appearances; deconstructing generally accepted notions so as to transform students and teachers into agents of change; giving students a rounded education and a general background of culture and information; examining architectural themes, such as place and geometry; fostering an appreciation of the canonical works; narrating the lives and works of the celebrity architects, locating them in a chain of influences; and so on. None of these notions of the role of architectural history directly relates to design practice and none, therefore, provides a basis for the integration of history within the studio. 133

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The expulsion of history from the studio Before posing the question in new ways, it is necessary to locate it in historical context, and briefly describe how the divorce of architectural history and the design studio came about. There was a time, prior to the Second World War, when, with one or two radical exceptions like the Bauhaus, design studios embraced history as a core of design activity. This changed in the immediate postwar period, when the modern movement swept all before it and established itself as the regnant paradigm for design activity in design schools throughout the world. The expulsion of history to the margins of the design schools was a result of theoretical positions espoused by modernism. The modern movement was inimical to history. In its early beginnings it was closely associated with avant-garde causes that advocated 2

radical political and social change. It aimed to introduce a new architecture that would break with the past and express the triumphs of techno-rational positivism. In the modernist view, the architectural past was to be discarded as standing in the way of progress to a utopian future. In the design schools this progressivist ideology went together with the adoption of rule-based design methodologies. The design rules, based on models derived from the hard sciences, were considered to formulate realities having universal application. Design, in this view, is a science, which deals with formulae that are deemed timeless, which is to say, stand apart from the vagaries of history. In its earlier manifestations the modern movement espoused functionalism, the reductive and bleakly utilitarian teaching that buildings are to be designed by reference to use and by way of technological solutions to functional problems. Design was a mechanistic response to instrumental needs. In this push to maximise efficiency, history was irrelevant and negligible. By the time modernism became the ruling paradigm in design schools it had, at least in its mainstream version, shed many of its earlier pretensions to social and political change; so also, over the years, the technoscientific methodologies have lost their allure. However, as a residue or sediment from these earlier beliefs, history remains banished from the studio, even though the reasons for its absence have been forgotten. It might be objected that the advent of post-modernism brought history back from exile and made it once more relevant in the design studio. This, however, was history in the most trivial sense, serving as a database for images or patterns to be appropriated for the purposes of style. Even if this thin trace of history was allowed to re-enter the studio, however, architectural historians were still confined to the lecture room, where they didn’t get in the way of the main game – designing. History, in any serious sense, remained 134

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ancillary to architectural education. At any rate, post-modernist architecture is itself now history and has left little residue of its push to cite from the past.

What is the problem? If the design studio has been operating for more than half a century in the absence of history, why is it now seen to be necessary to reinstate it? According to conventional wisdom, the problem, put simply, is that architectural education is fragmented, made up of seemingly unrelated parts that students find difficult to put together to form a cohesive whole. As every academic in architectural schools knows, a great deal of time and effort goes into attempts to devise unified and cohesive curricula. Integration is a recurrent focus for interminable discussion and argument. Schemes to integrate history and other courses into the design studio, such as the ‘problem based’ format, in which lecturers are brought into the studio as consultants to provide expertise relating directly to a design problem, have not been widely accepted because they have negative entailments, not least that the integration that takes place in the studio is at the expense of cohesion in the teaching in the areas represented by the experts. References to history in the studio, when they are not simply presented as precedents for emulation, tend to be superficial and out of context. Architectural historians also fear that outside the lecture room history loses its critical bite and becomes a mere handmaiden of design, delegated the menial task of providing precedents, almost invariably drawn from the most recent past. This is a fear reiterated by several of the historians writing in Architectural History and the Design Studio. They point out that the danger in integration is that history will lose its identity as the discipline that operates to produce thinking, cultured, well-informed and well-rounded practitioners, rather than mere technicians; it is to risk losing the autonomy of a discipline that carries the prestige and shows the cachet of a university education as contrasted with that given in a trade school. On the other hand, there is the countering fear that unless history informs students in a way that plays directly into the design studio, it will be considered irrelevant and lose even its marginalised place in the institutions. There is, however, another argument advanced for integration: the banishing of history from the studio has resulted in a loss of any sense of continuity with the past, so that contemporary works of architecture are often in jarring discord when juxtaposed with buildings from an earlier period.

3

Whereas many architects and academics tend to dismiss such concerns as expressing nothing more than a backward-looking and reactionary conservatism, or else a naïve, uninformed and nostalgic sentimentality, 135

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nevertheless the questions raised about continuity have not been adequately scrutinised in the light of insights coming from philosophical post-modernist thinking, which calls into question modernity’s prejudice against tradition and a sense of continuity, seeing them as nothing more than obstacles to 4

progress.

In sum, there is a push for integration and the reinstatement of a sense of continuity, while yet preserving the autonomy and identity of architectural history as a discipline in its own right. The arguments for this having been raised, however, there is a singular lacuna when it comes to putting forward firm proposals for bringing it to pass.

Hermeneutic understanding of history This seems to indicate that there is a need to rethink the role of historical studies in the architectural curriculum. In the following this will be done by seeing the role of architectural history in terms of metaphors drawn from hermeneutics. What is the role of history, understood hermeneutically? As outlined in the introduction to this book, the answer, if given in full, would encompass the greater part of hermeneutical philosophy. It involves a reiteration of the staples of hermeneutical thinking: the hermeneutical circle, prejudice as the prerequisite for understanding, tradition, historically effected consciousness, Bildung, excursion and return, phronesis, and so on. The direct relevance of these teachings (which are so many metaphors) is that interpretation, which is coincident with understanding, involves going back to and engagement with a ‘text’ from the past, and bringing it back into the present in a form that is relevant in that it can be applied in the particular circumstances of a present situation. In this, the word ‘text’ is used generically to indicate anything that conveys meaning – works of art, music, dance, nonverbal as well as verbal materials. In this context architectural history is seen as the interpretation of architectural texts: buildings, cities, theories, drawings, virtual designs in cyberspace, anything from the past, remote or recent, that conveys architectural meaning. History, in this kenning, is a reading of the past in order to make it applicable to the present and expand or alter our understanding so that we approach the future with revised anticipations. In this hermeneutical perspective, the role of history thus becomes one of reading the past in order to make it applicable to the present. History, however, is not simply a matter of translating the past into the present, but also bears on how we cope with the future. Hermeneutical philosophy shows that the past plays into the present, not simply affecting, but effecting the ways in which we understand anything at all; equally, it plays into the future, 136

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effecting the way in which we cast projects forward. This proposition has a general application, having relevance to every event of understanding, but in the context of this discussion it more specifically applies to the way in which the past plays into and structures every design decision, and equally plays into the future, effecting the manner in which design decisions are projected ahead.

Repetition Rather than reverting to familiar metaphors of the hermeneutical discourse, the theme of bringing the past into the present and projecting it into the future will be developed by reference to Kierkegaard’s concept of repetition 5

(Gjentagelse). In his book, Repetition: An Essay in Experimental Psychology,

Kierkegaard offers insights into what he means by this term by way of a story about the plight of a young man who has fallen in love, but gets nothing but misery from his infatuation. After the first days something has gone amiss: he can recollect his love, but cannot repeat it. His inability stems from the fact that he has idealised or ‘poeticised’ his love, and cannot make it real by entering into a relationship, with the demands that such an engagement makes. In this way, says Kierkegaard, the young man has ‘leaped over life’. ‘If the girl dies tomorrow, it will make no essential difference; he will throw himself down again, his eyes will fill with tears again, he will repeat the poet’s 6

words again.’ The point in this story for Kierkegaard is that the young lover has ‘leaped over life’ because he has not moved forward in life; he has transposed his love into an ‘ideal’ world, outside life. What Kierkegaard means by this story hinges on his comment that the young man can recollect his love, but cannot engage with it. In this he is referring to the Greek, and more specifically Platonic doctrine of recollection (anamnesis). For Plato any accretion of knowledge is by way of recollecting, or re-membering, putting together again here in this sensible world realities that exist in a supra-sensible place, the intelligible world, the domain of Ideas, which are known not by the mind or the senses, but by the Intellect, 7

the ‘organ’ of immediate and intuitive Knowledge. Kierkegaard is saying that in recollecting his love the young man is raising it to a supra-sensible level, idealising it so that it no longer has direct bearing on his life. He has ‘leaped beyond life’ into a world of abstractions. His passion has been transformed into Platonic love. ‘This curious dialectic’, as Kierkegaard terms it, makes the young man miserable, but his misery could be averted if he chose to repeat his love by involving himself in it, repeating it in all its vicissitudes, and by this repetition, continually renewing it, drawing from it all its possibilities. 137

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Repetition is to return to what went before, to re-engage with it, and relive it afresh. It is to bring the past back to life, not in the sense of reviving it so that it is again what it was before, but to bring it back into life, where it lives again with renewed vitality. According to Kierkegaard, repetition in this sense is the opening up of life, from within life and towards life. It is a movement of life, the very motion of an authentically lived life. We are temporal beings, and as such we can either turn towards the timeless, the abode of eternal truths, or can engage in a creative repetition in all our projects. Repetition is the unfolding or disclosing of possibilities held in the past. In Gadamerian terms, it is going back to a text and reinterpreting it again and again so as to draw from it new meanings that are pertinent to one’s present situation. It is, therefore, a representation, a re-present-ation, bringing again into the present and there re-enacting what has gone before. Kierkegaard’s notion of repetition turns Greek/Platonic recollection on its head. Repetition, he says, is what recollection was for the Greeks, but with a vital difference. ‘Recollection and repetition are the same movement, except in opposite directions, for what is recollected has been, is repeated 8

backward, whereas genuine repetition is recollected forward.’ What does Kierkegaard mean when he says that recollection and repetition are the same movement? Platonic recollection is a movement away from this sensible world 9

of everyday existence toward the intelligible world of eternal Ideas. So recollection is a movement back from the world of everyday experience to what was forever in eternity; it is a movement back from the present to what was already. The final end of this movement is the end of everyday existence; it is a removal from here to there. The young man recollects his love by turning back (retreating) to an ideal, eternal love – to Platonic love. In terms of Platonic recollection, existence in time is a repetition of what pre-exists in Eternity. For Kierkegaard, by contrast, repetition is in the temporal realm. Recollection takes place in the order of knowledge, repetition in the order of existence; the order of knowledge is timeless; and Plato (as does Hegel) interprets reality as timeless, a rational process where logic, which is also timeless, reigns. For Kierkegaard, however, a logical system of existence is impossible since, being timeless, it is removed from the temporal conditions of everyday existence. Whereas recollection tries to re-member what lies in the eternal, repetition is an engagement with past experience in order to re-member it in ways that are ever new. Kierkegaard’s notion of repetition traces to Aristotle, for whom it is manifested in phronesis, mention of which brings the discussion back into the hermeneutical arena, where repetition becomes the equivalent of an evincing of new understanding from the text of the past, an understanding that is disclosed in new situations. Thus, the young man would repeat his 138

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love if he applied it again and again in new situations; he would understand his love by loving, by undertaking a process of continuing and repetitive reenactment. So similarly, in phronesis, prior understandings, derived from an engagement with the past, are applied in different ways to meet particular situations in the present. Heidegger expresses ideas that resonate with Kierkegaard’s notion of repetition when he speaks of ‘retrieval’ (Wiederholung). Retrieval, literally a ‘fetching back’, is a bringing back of possibilities from the past. Dasein’s resolve manifests itself as a retrieval: Dasein takes over its past through repetition by fetching back time and again its possibilities. In its fullest sense, in retrieval/repetition Dasein comes toward its authentic potentiality for Being when it comes

back to itself, when it comes back to that which it has been all 10

along.

As in the case of repetition, retrieval is an opening up of life, an opening up of the possibilities for life, by bringing back into a present context what has gone before. Are Kierkegaard and Heidegger advocating that we should merely copy what has happened before, which would seem to imply a slavish bondage to the past and the dismal prospect of an eternal return of the same? Quite on the contrary, both see in a return to the past possibilities for freedom, authentic living, a new potential for thinking and acting. Heidegger says, ‘repetition does not bring again something that is past’, by which he means that in authentic retrieval the past is changed. It is not a mere repetition, a mechanical or literal mimesis, but a retrieval of possibilities. The movement of retrieval, although initiated by a return to the past, is directed towards the future: ‘[H]istory has its essential importance neither in what is past, nor in the “today” and its “connection” with what is past, but in that authentic 11

historizing of existence that arises from Dasein’s future.’ And ‘The movement here is essentially futural, just as the future has priority in the ecstatic character of time’.

12

It is important here to draw a distinction between static and dynamic repetition. Static repetition is a mere repetition, in which the same is repeated as it was, a copying in which nothing changes. It is a literal mimesis, a reproduction of what was previously. Dynamic repetition, by contrast, is a mode of interpretation in which new aspects of what is being interpreted – something from the past – unfold in the act of interpretation. Hence Gadamer says that real understanding (which equates interpretation) is always understanding differently. When we come to understand something, we do not simply repeat or reproduce a prior understanding, but produce a 139

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new understanding, which is a working out of the possibilities inherent within the ‘text’ of the past. Repetition is not the eternal manifesting in time or the past manifesting in the present, but a text from the past being understood in a new and enabling way.

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Dynamic repetition produces an excess, an

‘accretion of reality’. Historical understanding, when authentic, is just such a dynamic repetition, one in which tradition speaks again, not simply repeating verbatim what has already been said, but saying it in a new voice. Dynamic repetition involves a movement forward, toward the future from the past. It is a re-articulation of the past; it is putting together again the parts remaining from the past – the remains, traces of the past, memory traces. Repetition, functioning dynamically, gives voice to the ‘silent power of the possible’. Repetition does not entail that there is nothing new under the sun, that is, that we are trapped in an endless repetition of the same as revealed from memory. Quite on the contrary, repetition, when taken as a working out of the possibilities that reveal themselves when the past is brought back to the 14

present and allowed to speak by tarrying with it, is not only the source of all that is new, but also the only freedom available to us.

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To choose to take up

the possibilities opened up by the past when brought back to memory is, says Kierkegaard, the very essence of freedom and its only avenue.

Memory In Greek mythology, Mnemosyne, Memory, is the mother of the nine muses, each of whom is entrusted with the task of evoking an aspect of memory by way of one of nine forms of poetry, dance and music. Clio is the muse entrusted with the poetic narration of dramatic events that took place in the past, which is precisely the meaning of historia, the Latin word from which our word ‘history’ derives. Clio is thus the muse of history and as such embodies memory as it re-enacts and re-cites the dramas of the past. This re-enactment or re-citation involves a re-appraisal of the past, an act involving judgement, so that Clio performs as a histor, the Greek term for ‘judge’. Mnemosyne, Memory, gives birth to Clio, the muse of history. In turn, Clio, acting on her mother’s behalf, gives birth to new ways of telling what has happened in remote times. In this role she enters into and inspires the historian who, by this enthusing, is enabled to remember what has gone before and express it in a new poetic imagery. History, in this mythological guise, is dynamic repetition. Mythology, as one of the halls in the house of memory, here reminds us what memory is and what it does. Inspired by history, memory gives birth to new enactments of the past, reacting to the past in such a 140

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manner that the past is once more present, is re-presented in the here and now. Clio, however, not only looks back to what went before. Homer says, ‘She says what has been, what is, and what will be’. She has foresight as well as hindsight. She has the power of prophecy: her telling of events in times past is not simply a mirror image of what happened then; she remembers them, which is to say re-assembles them, so they reflect into the present and into what is yet to come. History, as an aspect of memory, thus re-gathers the past, putting it together in new and pertinent images. Clio, as Memory in the guise of history, thus possesses powers of insight and foresight. She reinterprets the past to give birth to the new, in which the ‘new’ is not the totally new, and as if created ex nihil, but the renewed. To remember interpretively is to renew the past in the present, and to cast forth, project it into the future. Memory, however, cannot be thought in isolation; it is the reverse side of oblivion, the forgotten.

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Memory and forgetting necessarily go

together. Forgetting is the condition for the possibility of remembering: ‘Forgetting is not merely an absence and a lack, but as Nietzsche pointed 17

out, a condition of the life of the mind.’ There is a need to remember only because something has been forgotten. Etymologically, the ‘forgotten’ is the fore-gone, what has gone before, what has got away, as when we say that memory escapes us. Forgetting is not merely the absence of a presence, but the absence of a prior presence, one that we are able to bring back to presence, and re-present. This representation, however, is not possible if the prior presence has been totally forgotten. Oblivion thus has two aspects: total forgetting, the past that has left no trace and can never be retrieved; and that which is forgotten but can be retrieved, the past whose fragmented parts or traces still remain and can be recollected, put together again in new ways. Recollection (now used in its everyday rather than Platonic sense) is demonstrated in the way language works. In speech, writing or thought, language is a continuing remembering of what we have understood before – words, constructions, meanings – and whenever we use language we are interpreting it anew in an occasional context; we are translating meanings that we have understood in the past into meanings that come out in a different way in every event of occurrence. Remembering language is an act of interpretation. We understand language by way of memory; when we understand the words, we do so by remembering what we have previously understood and by reinterpreting it in new ways that fit the particular circumstances in which the words come to us. The interpretation, as in all else, can be trivial or profound – static or dynamic – in proportion to how we engage with what the words say. 141

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As language is made up of words, so also analogously is anything that conveys meaning. When there is an adequate engagement, that is to say, when there is sufficient mindfulness, awareness, paying attention, to whatever it is that needs to be interpreted (the text), the fragments of being that lie dormant as possibilities waiting to be re-articulated, will be awakened, will return to memory, where they are put together again in a new way. This act of paying attention is, in accordance with the implications carried in its etymology (ad-tendere, a tension, a straining towards), a stretching towards what has been forgotten. The fruitfulness of the interpretation – the degree to which new understanding unfolds – depends on participation in the past. Participation, as we indicated in Chapter 5, is the function of the theoros, the theorist; participation is theoretical involvement. The theoros understood the rituals by taking part in them, which is to take a part and to put the parts together again in memory. The participation of the theoros can only be complete if s/he has 18

respect for the activities s/he meets with. The theoros was required to engage with the festival, just in the same way that Kierkegaard would have the young man engage in a dynamically repetitive encounter with his love, with full involvement, which is a ‘rolling inward’, turned by the wheel of events rather than standing apart and observing its turning from outside, to discover that to be thus involved is to evolve. The same involvement is demanded of the historian: when s/he turns to meet the past s/he must be engaged if the encounter is to result in a dynamic rather than static repetition. Memory recalls possibilities from the past and re-presents them in a manner that renders them relevant to the present and the future. The process of retrieval and re-membering of possibilities (the rearticulation of what has been dismembered by time) and their projection, throwing ahead, to the future, is what enables us to make sense of what is happening around us now, and to cope with what may happen in the future. All understanding arises from the turning of the wheel of memory, a wheel because the past not only turns towards what is ahead of itself, but the understanding of the present and future return to change the way the past is remembered. Applying this to the design studio: not only is designing a process of interpretation and understanding,

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but every design move, every design

decision, every judgement or choice (a design-ating of this rather than that), is made by way of an appeal to memory; it is a re-fashioning, a practical application of what is already understood in memory, a bringing forth of understanding from the place where it lies dormant in forgetfulness, and remaking it in a form that fits the circumstances of the programme. It is the past projected. To the extent that every design decision involves judgement every designer is a histor, a judge, one who makes judgements by reapplying memory to the case at hand. It is the past projected by the application of 142

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phronesis, practical understanding derived from past experience. Every design project, as the etymology of the word indicates, is a ‘throwing ahead’, and what is thus thrown is an understanding coming from memory of the past. When we reinterpret what architectural history is in terms of the metaphors of repetition and memory, its role comes to be understood in a new way. Its function is no longer simply to give an account of what happened in the architectural past, nor is it primarily to act as a surrogate for critical or deconstructivist theory, nor to provide a general cultural background, nor any of the other functions with which it is usually associated. These are important but, as we have seen, have no direct bearing on what goes on in the studio. They are essentially ancillary and secondary to history’s main role, which is to evoke the past, bringing it back from the oblivion of forgetfulness to serve as a source of possibilities in present design situations. Memory is already at work in the design process; the role of the historian is to remind us that this is so; and to bring back from the vast oblivion of the forgotten those things that are relevant to us at the moment. There is individual historical memory, and memory inscribed in texts. The former is the memory that each of us possesses as a bequest from tradition and revealed in the play of language, societal norms, behavioural patterns, expectations, prejudices – all those things embedded in the historically effected consciousness that establish the parameters (the horizons) of interpretation. This is memory imprinted into our very being. There is also memory that is inscribed in the texts that have been handed down to us from the past. The role of the historian is to bring from the past both individual memories and those inscribed in texts and to interpret them, which is to say re-articulate them, so that the possibilities they hold for the present can be discerned. The role of history, prompted by the historian, is to strengthen remembrance by demonstrating how it contains the possible; and to widen the scope of memory, by venturing into the vast unknown territories of the past, into the landscape of oblivion, to return with understandings for present application. The historian, that is to say, acts to interpret the past for the purposes of the present; the historian translates from one into the other.

Modernism and memory To view history as memory is to show the futility of the modern movement’s attempt to expel history from the studio. It is a simple impossibility to dismantle memory, to deconstruct it, to reduce it to ground zero, except in death, unconsciousness, or those rare cases of total amnesia described by Oliver Sachs, in which the unfortunate sufferer becomes wholly dysfunctional 143

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and loses all sense of identity. To deny history in the design studio is to deny the way in which designing works and to deny the nature of the being of the designer. Studio activities cannot exist except in and by the presence of memory and historical understanding. The question with which this chapter started, ‘How can architectural history and the design studio be integrated?’ is made meaningless when history is seen as the play of repetition and memory. History is already at work in the studio, and necessarily so. Studio practitioners might imagine that history does not enter into studio activities, but this is simply to demonstrate a lack of awareness of how designing operates. The refusal to deal with the past is akin to the young man’s leaping over life, a refusal to engage with what is, with what actually exists; it is a flight into static abstraction. Even if the modernist doctrine of cutting free from the past is no longer consciously espoused by anyone (fashions having changed), the residues of this thinking have sedimented and solidified into the hard rock of the status quo. The prejudice against history/memory has set into existential aspic. Meanwhile, history, the past, memory continue as they always have, and always will, to pervade every single thought and action that takes place in the design studio. History, as memory, is the ever-present secret sharer. The question to be asked, therefore, is not how history is to be integrated, but how its working is to be evoked from the oblivion of forgetfulness into an explicit awareness; and how to take best advantage of history as memory when its ubiquity and ineradicable presence in the design studio is remembered?

Remembering history in the studio To repeat, the appropriate question is not how to integrate history and the design studio, but how to make the working of history as memory explicit rather than dormant, so that the possibilities lying latent in the past can be realised, which is to say, so that the potentialities embedded in the past can be brought to enactment? How might this be done? The answer comes from thinking of the studio as the site for historical repetition, where design programmes focus on processes of translation from the architecture of the temporally and geographically remote into architecture of the here and now. In this perspective, the past, however distant and alien, is seen as a store of possibilities awaiting disclosure and translation into the language of today, with a new vocabulary emerging from changes in technology, historical research, social conditions, ecology, heritage conservation, and so on. 144

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To see the design studio as a site for dynamic repetition goes with seeing design as a process of interpretation and translation, in which the possibilities inherent in the architectural past are drawn out – or allowed to disclose themselves. This disclosure is contingent on a willingness on the part of the designer-translator to enter into a two-way dialogue of question and answer with a text taken from the architectures of other times or other places. Translation, in the sense of carrying across possibilities from what went before or what happened elsewhere, involves not only asking questions of the text, starting from the most basic questions of what does it mean and how does it impinge on present understandings, but also requires an openness to the text, allowing it to ask questions of the designer-translator. If the dialogue is to be fruitful, these questions are to be at the same time deep and thick: ‘deep’ in the sense of asking how or why the host text (building or whatever) has the form it has (by inquiring, for example, into the reasons for its geometry, its orientation, its symbolic or mythic associations, its structural system, use of materials, and so on); and ‘thick’ in the sense given the term by Clifford Geertz, indicating tracing the ramifications of the text into a wider social context (how, for example, it relates to the community, its place in social, political, religious, ritual and other practices). One of the aims of these projects would be to habituate students to the notion that every design project is an exercise in interpretation, that the site, the brief, the structural systems, materials, and so on, are all analogues of texts that require translation. In any exercise of interpretation or translation a basic ‘rule’ applies, what might be called ‘the principle of unfamiliarity’. The familiar is seen to require no interpretation because it is already understood. The unfamiliar, by contrast, is so because there is something in it we can’t understand, so that interpretation is necessary. This bears on design projects in two ways: the more provocatively unfamiliar the historical material the student is asked to translate, the greater the chances of disclosing new and enhanced understandings, so that the tutor should seek out what is most unfamiliar to be translated; and second, that a design tutor is consciously to encourage students to seek out the unfamiliar in what seems the most familiar. In this latter case, the student’s own home can be taken as the focus for explorations in the foreign, and fresh memories of the familiar can reveal wholly unsuspected content.

Continuity and preservation Design as translation projects the past into the present and future. It reinstates a conscious awareness of the role of history in the studio. It activates memory 145

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and acts on possibilities carried in the past. It also functions in the service of continuity. Translation mediates past, present and future and thereby bridges the three times. It fuses their horizons of understanding, and by this preserves the past in the present and into the future. To re-enact or represent the past 20

is also to preserve it, in the sense of guardianship or stewardship. History as memory stores as well as restores the past, thus guaranteeing preservation and continuity. The past is brought into the present, projected into the future, and thus made relevant.

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Part 3 Otherness

The other is the strange, the different, that which is outside the experience 1

of a particular group or individual. The concept of otherness has become a position about which to rally, in the absence of any other means of identification. It is used to signify the dispossessed, the homeless, the 2

traveller, the refugee and the alien. ‘The other’ receives special treatment in Lacanian psychoanalysis, as part of a triangle of co-dependence involving: 1

the sophisticated, aware self;

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brute existence (the infantile realm of the id); and

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the other.

3

In sum, the other, and our encounter with it, is already part of our make-up as adult human beings. The alien is within. For psychoanalysis, when we identify something disquieting in others it is in part an identification of something we find unsettling in ourselves. How is architecture concerned with otherness? The domestic sphere epitomises the familiar, the comfortable and the secure. The alien landscape, the foreign environment, heavy industry, waste dumps, swathes of urban blight, unplanned or over-planned cities, even suburbs, take on the role of the other. Contrary to the symbolically rich, historically situated, meaningful places of traditional dwelling, we encounter the non-places of airport waiting lounges, bulk-purchase superstores, multi-storey car parks and selfconsciously place-making shopping precincts (e.g. Birmingham’s Bull Ring), subject to flows dictated by signage and under constant CCTV surveillance. The hearth is displaced by the ephemeral meeting spaces of mobile phone 147

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users, the apparatuses of mass consumption, and uncanny encounters in 4

virtual space. In the otherness of non-places we are anywhere but here.

The search for otherness becomes interesting when architecture discovers and appropriates the alien within. The hearth is after all the sacrifical altar, the family is the primal site of conflict (Freud), the household is predicated on the primacy of the master–slave relationship (Aristotle), and 5

the threshold of the house is the site of the trickster, beggar and thief. The home is the place of the gift, but the gift is sometimes conditionally given, 6

inequitable and fraught. Architecture can be constructed to present its opposite, unwittingly or as ironic gesture. Eisenman’s provocative set of unhomely dwellings comes to mind; Gehry’s own house renovation of chain 7

link and fetishised fenestration, Ben van Berkel’s geometrically paradoxical Mobius House, and countless dwellings less celebrated. Architecture can deliver the unexpected, contradict its apparent intentions, defy customary typologies, render familiar haunts strange, and provide non-places that are strangely familiar. In this, architecture engages with interpretation. It is not just that a work of architecture presents as an interpretation of something (an idea, or an age), or that a building is there to be interpreted (explained), but in so far as it engages us in a dialogical tension between the familiar and the unfamiliar, architecture is already complicit in the work of interpretation. The response, ‘that’s strange’, is not reserved for the avant-garde. The potential to reveal variance exists in any work, and implies a recognition of difference, otherness and a questioning. The identification of overstated otherness can also suggest a closing off, a shutting down of interpretative apparatus and disengagement. As we shall see in the chapters that follow, permanent openness to the other is neither possible nor desirable. We are always making judgements from a position. A revelation is also a closing off to other interpretations. The following chapters are born of Adrian Snodgrass’s engagement with the art and architectures of India, China and Japan, which have held European architects in thrall since the eighteenth century, because of their overt positions of otherness in the occidental imagination. He examines the implications that engagement with such otherness has for the design studio. In Chapter 8 (The fusion of horizons), Snodgrass introduces concepts from Orientalism, and argues not only against intolerance, but similarly disabling mawkish empathy. The latter can engender speaking for others and thus silencing them before they can give full voice to their complaints and opinions. The active interpreter is not always required to identify with, or be sympathetic to, or even tolerant of, the views or actions of others. Interpretation requires a more sophisticated response than apparently uncritical acceptance. The mutual examination and play of prejudices can provoke rejection of our own prejudices as well as those of others. 148

Otherness

Continuing this theme, Chapter 9 (A world of difference), examines the rhetoric of post-colonial studies in architecture. Aware of the sensitivities of Orientalism it often dares not speak of the pre-colonial condition for fear of romanticising an alien tradition, or further presuming intellectual dominance. Post-colonialism only dares to speak critically of Western hegemony and its distortions on traditional cultures. Post-colonial study therefore encounters the paradox that it excludes any attempt at understanding traditions outside of the West. Snodgrass examines how hermeneutical metaphors release scholars from the inhibitions imposed by metaphors of power and domination. We are not obliged to root out all vestiges of Western prejudice (an impossible task in any case) before we can begin to research Asian and Middle Eastern architecture. How can alien architectures speak to a Western sensibility? In Chapter 10 (Myth, mandala and metaphor), Snodgrass examines the mandala, its myths and rituals as a case lesson in architectural otherness. In the process we are confronted with the workings of myth, processes of demythologising, and how these relate to metaphor, embodiment and truth claims. This study invests ancient buildings with a present relevance, in which they are seen not merely as exotic monuments, but as texts that relate to the contemporary human condition, to basic modes of understanding, and to the ways we are able to interpret language, perception, thought and action. As a second, more contemporary, case lesson, Snodgrass reviews the implications of the architecture of Kisho Kurokawa and others of the Japanese ‘New Wave’, who argue for a rejection of Western rationality in favour of a thinking more in keeping with their own traditions. This study illuminates the insights of Heidegger on technological enframing as a symptom of the contemporary condition, and seeks resolution through a fusion of hermeneutical concepts of phronesis with Mahâyâna Buddhism. Informed by such insights, Kurokawa and others translate tradition by appropriating and adapting technology as provocative ways out of this enframing. These strategies are examined in Chapter 11 (Translating tradition). As a further case lesson in otherness, this time the other of a foreign language, Snodgrass reveals the tradition that anticipates the stimulating discourses of deconstruction, post-structuralism and radical hermeneutics, in so far as they develop concepts of difference, rift and gap. The Japanese concept of ma opens a gap in which to rethink the architectural object. Translated through the apparatus of Japanese language and Chinese ideographs, the solidity of the architectural object melts into the fluidity of betweenness, in Chapter 12 (Thinking through the gap). Although the discourse is poetic and invokes new aesthetic awakenings, the end is to present a mode of action and reflection in opposition to our accustomed ways of thinking architecture. 149

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As a summary, Chapter 13 (Random thoughts on the Way) examines traditional insights into journeying, and applies these to the design studio, reviewing concepts of excursion and return, play, edification, history and metaphor. By this alien reading, design represents everything that is anathema to professional orthodoxies. It is ostensibly aimless, lacks principles and subverts commitment. Far from being reprehensible, however, these traits yield a model for other disciplines. Design offers edification in action. In sum, these chapters work through a series of strategies for design that are informed by hermeneutical understanding. Encounters with alien traditions contribute to the circle of understanding by exposing and bringing to presence the designer’s preconceptions, which in turn influence how we regard the other.

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Chapter 8

The fusion of horizons

Figure captions (clockwise from top left ) 1–4

Horizons of the Scottish coastlands

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Cottam Powerstation, Nottinghamshire, UK

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Peterborough Mosque, Peterborough, UK

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The City of London, with St Paul’s Cathedral

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The horizon of the Western Isles, UK

Chapter 8

The fusion of horizons

If it were asked why we should study and research the Asian context, it is likely that the answer would follow one or other of two lines, the first instrumental and 1

pragmatic, the other cultural. The first argues that these studies are undertaken to provide us with the practical knowledge we need to attain an equal or preferably privileged position in our trading, diplomatic, economic and other dealings with Asian countries, and to develop effective immigration and foreign 2

policies. This is to acquire knowledge for the enabling power it gives.

Another voice, by contrast, argues that this approach runs counter to the time-honoured role of civil society in fostering a disinterested scholarship that pursues knowledge for its own sake and without concern for immediate outcomes. Further, an exclusive preoccupation with practical knowledge will not give a balanced view of Asia, one that acknowledges its great cultural achievements. In our pursuit of knowledge for economic gain, we must not overlook the importance of the cultural aspects of Asia. We must balance our dealing with the everyday concerns of the market-place with art, architecture and literature. We must not be branded as Philistines, driven by merely economic and political motives. Both sides of this argument put their faith in knowledge as the key to success in our dealings with Asia. It is ignorance that disables us in our encounters with the East. On the one hand we lack the type of knowledge that has immediate practical application; and on the other we lack knowledge of Asian culture that would allow us to present ourselves to Asians as other than uncultivated and mercenary bumpkins. Both arguments are plausible; but both overlook the fact that knowledge, whether of practicalities or culture, is not alone sufficient to 153

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improve our skills in dealing with Asians. It is not only knowledge we lack, but understanding; and lack of understanding does not equate to either a lack of knowledge or, as will be shown, a lack of goodwill, tolerance or the ability to sympathise or identify with the outlook of others. If understanding is none of these, in what does it consist? One of the aims of this chapter is to pick out some parts of the answer to this question and apply them to clarify the way in which we come to understand an unfamiliar culture. Hermeneutics is concerned with the way in which we interpret and arrive at an understanding of a text, but its findings can be extrapolated to every event of interpretation and understanding, including the interpretation and understanding of Asian modes of thought or action. We come to an understanding of the ‘text’ of the Asian phenomenon in the same way that we come to an understanding of a written text, or of anything else that needs to be interpreted and understood. Philosophical hermeneutics discloses some of the inadequacies of considering the function and aims of Asian Studies exclusively in terms of knowledge. Underpinning strategies for the development of Asian Studies is the assumption that universities, museums and other cultural institutions aim to accumulate and deliver knowledge and that they are or should be objective, to accord with the Cartesian and scientific ideal that separates the subject from the object and disallows prejudices or any other subjective state of mind to intrude into the relationship. In this view an encounter with an Asian culture is an encounter with something wholly other; and one’s own predilections, ideologies and cultural proclivities play no part in the equation. One knows the other from a distance. This corresponds to the first of three types of I–Thou relationship that Gadamer describes to elucidate the sort of dynamics that come into play 3

in the hermeneutical event of understanding a text. His explication of the I–Thou relationships serves equally well, however, to indicate the way in which we come to an understanding of anything unfamiliar, such as a foreign culture, which can here be taken as the ‘text’ or the ‘Thou’ which we are attempting to interpret. The first mode of encounter of the I and the Thou discussed by Gadamer is that in which the Thou is treated as wholly separate and as an object to be manipulated and controlled. The I confronts the Thou ‘in a free and uninvolved way, and, by methodically excluding all subjective elements in 4

regard to it … discovers what it contains’. The I is not interested in the Thou as a human being, but only in ‘human nature’, so that the I ‘seeks to discover things that are typical in the behaviour of one’s fellow men and is able to make 5

predictions concerning another person on the basis of experience’. Thus, viewed as an impersonal object, the behaviour of the Thou is made predictable, just like any other typical event we experience. 154

The fusion of horizons

Gadamer places this relation to the Thou among those approaches to understanding that evidence a ‘naive faith in method and in the objectivity 6

that can be attained through it’. It is an approach, says Gadamer, which is typified by the social sciences when they attempt to emulate the methods of the natural sciences. This approach is flawed in that it takes account only of a partial aspect of the actual procedure of the human sciences, and even that is schematically reduced, in that it is only what is typical and regular that is taken account of in human behaviour. This flattens out the hermeneutical experience.

7

By treating the other as an object, the interpreter prevents it from speaking for itself, so that no dialogue takes place. The conversation is one-sided. Gadamer says this objective form of interpretation ‘contradicts 8

the moral definition of man’ in that it views him as a means to be used to attain ends that are to one’s own advantage. In this connection, Gadamer cites Kant, who says that it is morally irresponsible to use others as a means to an 9

end, since man is always to be considered as an end in himself. To treat the Thou as an object lacks morality because it involves the explicit or implicit domination of the other. The second form of interpretation discussed by Gadamer is the sort of conversation in which the I acknowledges that the Thou is a person but nevertheless remains self-related. The conversation lacks reciprocity; the relation is reflective, in that for every claim of the Thou the I makes a counterclaim. One claims to express the other’s claim and even to understand the other better than the other understands himself. In this way the ‘Thou’ loses the immediacy with which it makes its claim. It is understood, but this means that it is anticipated and intercepted 10

reflectively from the standpoint of the other person.

This is a struggle for mutual recognition. In an extreme case it can lead to a complete domination of one of the speakers by the other. In this relationship the ‘dialectic of reciprocity that governs all I–Thou relationships is inevitably 11

hidden from the mind of the individual’.

When I think I know what the other says better than he does himself, ‘put words into his mouth’ and speak on his behalf, I successfully silence any claims his proposals might make on me. I do not accept the meaningful content of his utterance as a truth claim that impinges upon and calls into question my own concepts of what is true. 155

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Gadamer cites ‘an authoritarian form of welfare work’ as an example of this form of dialect. It is one that penetrates ‘all relationships between men as a reflective form of the effort to dominate. The claim to understand the other person in advance performs the function of keeping the 12

claim of the other person at a distance.’

In this form of Asian Studies the interpreter is not concerned with whether or not the culture studied can validly lay claims to aspects of truth. The interpreter speaks for the culture but only to the extent that what is said performs a self-serving function. The interpretation is entirely self-related; the interpreter does not see his or her own culture in a new way in the light of the unfamiliar one, nor accepts the unfamiliar as a challenge to his or her own beliefs and attitudes. The interpreter accepts no responsibility to answer the 13

questions the other raises.

In speaking for the other culture the interpreter claims to understand it, and thus rules out the need to answer its truth claims. The interpreter claims to speak for the other in a free, unprejudiced and objective manner; and it is precisely this ‘objectivity’ which prevents the Thou from contributing to or participating in the dialogue. Here again, as in the first form of encounter, the Thou remains remote and there is none of the reciprocal 14

and equal give-and-take of true dialogue. The I rejects a mutual and living relationship with the Thou and thus destroys the moral bond of the relationship and the true meaning of what the other has to say. The third approach to an encounter with the other is one in which the I experiences the Thou truly as a Thou, that is, listens to what s/he has to say and recognises his or her claim to truth.

15

For true listening the I must be

open to what the other says. But this openness exists ultimately not only for the person to whom one listens, but rather anyone who listens is fundamentally open. Without this kind of openness to one another there is no genuine human relationship. Belonging together always also means being able to listen to one another. When two people understand each other, this does not mean that one person ‘understands’ the other, in the sense of surveying him. Similarly, to hear and obey someone does not mean simply that we do blindly what the other desires. We call such a person a slave. Openness to the other, then, includes the acknowledgement that I must accept some things that are against 16

myself, even though there is no one else who asks this of me.

Similarly, in the hermeneutical experience of an alien culture, I must acknowledge the validity of its claims, not by simply acknowledging its otherness, ‘but in such a way that it has something to say to me’. 156

17

The fusion of horizons

With regard to the idea of ‘openness’ Gadamer cites Schlegel’s ‘axiom of familiarity … [namely,] that things must always have been [and 18

must be now] just as they are with us, for things are naturally like this’. This attitude negates openness, being a naive appropriation of the other, an assimilation that disallows any appreciation of the differences that make another culture unique and thus denies that it has anything new to offer us. By contrast: ‘The hermeneutical consciousness has its fulfillment, not in its methodological sureness of itself, but in the same readiness for experience that distinguishes the experienced man by comparison with the man captivated by dogma’.

19

By listening to what the Thou has to say and opening up to his questioning I recognise him to be a person. The I not only questions the Thou, but is in turn open to the questions the Thou asks. This is to enter into a dialogue that is capable of carrying the interlocutors along in such a way that the I and the Thou become a We. Gadamer points to the Platonic dialogues as the exemplary form of real conversation, in which, ‘language, in the process of question and answer, giving and taking, talking at cross purposes and seeing each other’s point, performs that communication of meaning which, 20

with respect to the written tradition, is the task of hermeneutics’.

The true hermeneutical dialogue is thus one that proceeds by question and answer, and the task of the interpreter is to act as an interlocutor in a Platonic dialogue with the foreign culture, opening up to an interrogation by what is found there. In this one does not dominate the other but enters into an exchange between conversational partners.

The fusion of horizons Gadamer claims that we do not and cannot approach a text with a mind like a tabula rasa. We bring with us anticipations, a body of beliefs, concepts, attitudes, norms and practices, which are instilled by our historical experience and constitute our life-world. The text, by contrast, belongs to a different life-world, removed in space and time. The interpreter who seeks understanding, therefore, can only assimilate the text of the other by structuring it in a different framework than its own. That is, the interpreter relates it to his or her own familiar conceptual framework, while at the same time respecting and preserving its otherness and not simply appropriating it for his or her own purposes. This is what Gadamer refers to as a ‘fusion of horizons’.

21

A ‘horizon’ is the tradition-situation which circumscribes one’s understanding at any moment.

22

It is the general context within which we

view and evaluate things. 157

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Every finite present has its limitations. We define the concept of ‘situation’ by saying that it represents a standpoint that limits the possibility of vision. Hence an essential part of the concept of situation is the concept of ‘horizon’. The horizon is the range of vision that includes everything that can be seen from a particular 23

vantage point.

Gadamer uses the term both in a temporal and spatial sense: a horizon is historically formed, and represents the perspective bequeathed us by our past.

24

As we have seen, Gadamer likens the limits of the physical

world to the world formed by our ‘prejudices’, that is, by all the expectations, prejudgements and forestructures of meaning and truth we bring with us to every event of interpretation. He says that, ‘a hermeneutical situation is determined by the prejudgements which we bring with us. They constitute, then, the horizon of a particular present, for they represent that beyond which it is impossible to see.’

25

A horizon thus corresponds to a system of prejudices, and different systems of prejudice determine different horizons. Horizons are not static but, as do our prejudices, continually change; and, in reverse, changes in our horizon change our prejudices. Horizons, that is to say, are limiting and finite, but at the same time changing and fluid; they define the limits of our vision, but at the same time are open and porous, so that: The closed horizon that is supposed to enclose a culture is an abstraction. The historical movement of human life consists in the fact that it is never utterly bound to any one viewpoint, and hence can never have a truly closed horizon. The horizon is, rather, something into which we move and that moves with us. Horizons change for a person who is moving.

26

For Gadamer every event of real understanding necessarily involves a fusion of horizons. We see the other from the position bounded by our own horizon, but that horizon is changed in the process of viewing the other, so that the other point of view is integrated into our own and a wider understanding of the matter under consideration results. The boundary separating the horizons disappears and they become one. This is neither the aggregation of two separate and closed horizons, nor the subsumption of the other horizon into one which remains unchanged and whose validity remains unquestioned. On the contrary, the horizon of the interpreter moves from within to embrace the other in such a way that the other assumes a continuing effectiveness. The interpretation of the other does not mean leaving our own 158

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horizon behind and entering the alien horizon so as to incorporate or appropriate something contained there, but means a merging of horizons in which our own horizon is transformed. Habermas, speaking of Gadamer’s concept of horizonal fusion, compares the process of coming to an understanding of the other to the learning of a foreign language, which we learn on the basis of our native language. To learn a foreign language we virtually repeat the learning process we went though when learning our own language. We are, he says, drawn into these learning processes by way of a mediation of the rules that we internalised in learning our own language. We develop an understanding of the other by way of the mediation of what we bring to the interpretation from our own tradition. Hermeneutic understanding, therefore, is ‘the interpretation of texts in the knowledge of already understood texts. It leads to new learning processes out of the horizon of already completed learning processes. It is a new step of socialization that takes previous socialization as its point of 27

departure.’

This translation is a transposition, not in the sense of moving into the position of the other by disregarding ourselves, but by bringing ourselves into the position of the other. When we thus transpose ourselves into the situation, says Gadamer, we become aware of the otherness, the ‘inextinguishable individuality’ of the other, so that: This placing of ourselves is not the empathy of one individual for another, nor is it the application to another person of our own criteria, but it always involves the attainment of a higher universality that 28

overcomes, not only our own particularity, but also that of the other.

Interpretation thus requires the involvement of our own conceptions and preconceptions.

29

When we attempt to understand the alien we cannot simply

step out from the boundaries of our own horizon into those that define the horizon of the other, since we are always ontologically grounded in our own historically wrought situation. To try to eliminate one’s own concepts in interpretation is not only impossible, but manifestly absurd. To interpret means precisely to use one’s own preconceptions so that the meaning of the text can really be made to speak for us. In our analysis of the hermeneutical process we saw that to acquire a horizon of interpretation requires 30

a fusion of horizons.

This rules out the possibility of reaching an understanding of another culture by approaching it as a self-contained and isolated entity that can be studied 159

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objectively. We cannot gain access to the other except by way of the mediation of our own preconceptions. We cannot study the other in et per

se, but only from the base of our own historically fashioned viewpoint. When the interpreter claims to be unprejudiced and objective, he ‘denies that he is historically affected – both in what he understands the text 31

to mean and by what he understands the text to question’. This denial defers the moment of application of the interpretation, its application as a questioning of one’s own situation, the application which Gadamer asserts is the only true event of understanding.

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The text [the alien culture] is questioned, but not the questioner. Thus to deny the necessity with which one’s own prejudices come into play in the event of understanding is to deny the possibility that 33

the truth of one’s own prejudices comes into question.

As Ricoeur points out, the dialectical concept of the fusion of horizons negates objectivism, in which treating the other as an object is premised on the forgetting of oneself; and it likewise rules out any notions of an absolute knowledge of the other, which would be to suppose that the other 34

can be articulated within a single, self-enclosed horizon.

In this light the alien other is no longer seen as a static and passive object from which we can extract a monosemic meaning to be used for our own purposes of manipulation, but is seen as an inexhaustible source of everchanging and polysemic possibilities for changing our understanding of the 35

other and ourselves.

By interpreting the other we ‘reconstruct’ it, in that it receives a new concretisation; and our interpretations are always ‘constructs’, in the sense that they always start from the position we occupy within our own horizon, so that we will always project the structure of our horizonal world into that of the other. This could not be otherwise, without an abrogation of the formations that make us what we are. The fusion of horizons is worked out by way of the dialectic of question and answer. Every text is the answer to a question, and the initial 36

task of the hermeneut is to find the question the text answers.

So likewise

with the interpretation of a foreign culture. We come to an understanding of that culture by seeking the questions concerning the human condition that the culture answers, and applying these questions and answers to ourselves. This is a matter of relating the horizon defined by the other to our own prejudice-defined horizon. We ask the text whether the question it answers is one that has relevance for us, here and now; and we ask whether the answer the text gives is an appropriate answer to the questions we are asking about ourselves in our present situation. 160

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We come to the dialogical encounter with the other with anticipations of what s/he will say; we have preconceptions concerning his or her meaning-horizon. If, however, everything s/he says coincides with our expectations no dialogical exchange will take place. It is only when s/he says things that are unfamiliar, strange or unintelligible that our interest is engaged and our unreflective self-preoccupation is broken. Only then are our preconceptions called into question.

37

The challenge of the apparent

eccentricity or abnormality of the other contains the possibilities for a restructuring of our own horizons. This involves inhibiting ‘the overhasty assimilation’ of the other to our own expectations of meaning, and listening to 38

the other ‘in a way that enables it to make its own meaning heard’.

In this light Gadamer asserts that the hermeneutical task is not to resolve but rather to accentuate the tension between the familiar and the unfamiliar horizons. We are to avoid a premature absorption of the text’s horizon into our own before we fully recognise its foreignness; we are to contrast it with our own so that it can fully assert itself. Only then can the hermeneut’s own horizon be fruitfully united with the contrasting horizon. There are, then, two phases in the interpretational process, one in which the foreignness of the other’s horizon is highlighted, followed by a fusion of that horizon with our own.

39

The expansion of our horizons is thus by way of a response to what is unknown or unfamiliar in the other. The unknown questions us; and every rewarding dialogue is an excursion into the unknown. We enter the unknown for what lies there to be discovered. In dialogue we wander in unexplored territory not with the intent of annexation, but of returning home to our own familiar horizons and seeing them in a new way because of what we have seen elsewhere. This reviewing of our own world in the light of what we see in another can be so radical that, as in a wholly engaging conversation, we no longer remember nor care to remember what our starting viewpoint was. Every act of interpretation and understanding, therefore, is a transformation of the horizon made up of our historically fashioned prejudices, and an assimilation of the unfamiliar. This does not necessarily mean that such a process is or can be made fully conscious. The fusion of horizons is not some objectively controlled event, but happens as it were ‘behind our back’, to be realised in deliberate consciousness only in self-reflective retrospection.

40

Our conscious

awareness of our own horizon is only part of the interplay of horizons, which 41

involves forms of tacit interaction. This being so, it follows that what has been described cannot be made into a hermeneutic ‘method’. The fusion of horizons is, rather, an instance of the working of the hermeneutical circle. Every event of interpretation proceeds by way of a 161

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projection of a prior understanding of the whole, which reflects back to explicate the parts. The attainment of an understanding of an alien culture proceeds by way of the same spiral pathway, in which we project a provisional anticipation of the meaning we are attempting to understand, and bring this back to disclose the original base of our projection. In this way the parts making up that base are refined, modified or abandoned, so as to restructure it for another projection of understanding. This is not, says Gadamer, a formal circle; nor is it objective or subjective, but is interplay between the interpreter and what is being interpreted. The anticipation of meaning is not subjective, but determined by the common bond that links us with what is being interpreted, a bond that is 42

constantly changing as the interpretation proceeds.

Implications for research Seen in this light, the tension in the rhetoric of Asian Studies between the arguments for a pragmatic approach in the cause of economic self-interest and those for a pure and disinterested scholarship accompanied by an appreciation of Asian art and culture are two expressions of an objective outlook. They both assume that the Asian phenomena to be studied are objects rather than interlocutors in a conversation. They both assume that the alien has nothing to say to us, or that we can speak on its behalf. In either case no understanding can arise. We have cut ourselves off from the possibility of exchange, which is the prerequisite for effective interpretation and understanding. Gadamer’s insights indicate that the learning of languages considered as objects and the acquisition of facts – economic, political, historical, cultural or whatever – are not enough to give us the skills needed to understand Asia. To view the Thou as an object, Gadamer claims, precludes or hinders understanding. The mastery of a language or the accumulation of a vast compendium of factual knowledge does not guarantee understanding, any more than does the study of art without involvement and openness to its truth claims. Our understanding of the thinking and actions of the other does not arise from a critical analysis of objective facts, but by processes of interpretation; it results from judgement rather than from rational analysis, if this latter is taken to mean the fragmentation and reduction of phenomena in the name of a rigorously logical method. The development of understanding involves the development of skills of judgement and evaluation that cannot be learned as if by rote, for reasons spelt out in Chapter 2 (Playing by the rules). It does not follow, however, that these matters lie outside the concern or responsibility of 162

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educational and cultural policy, since, even if they cannot be taught they can nevertheless be encouraged by the creation of a conducive learning environment. Cultural institutions can foster skills in interpretation and judgement by introducing us to a more self-reflexive and self-aware involvement with the text of the alien. If understanding involves judgement, which cannot be taught, then the function of research and education in Asian Studies is not only to promote languages and facts, but to foster hermeneutical skills, proceeding with the recognition that research is not objective and neutral, a methodical analysis of the facts of a matter, but inherently judgemental, that is, proceeding by judgement in the etymological meaning of the word, by a ‘right speaking’ (jus + dicus), which depends on a right listening in the context of a dialogical exchange. In contrast to this, the trend in Asian Studies towards an exclusive concern with what has immediate economic relevance runs the risk of producing not judicious interpreters who are right-speaking because they understand, but philistine technocrats who, even if knowing everything, understand nothing. By the same token, the study of artworks is of little avail in enhancing understanding if they are considered solely as objects of aesthetic, historical, exotic, decorative or monetary interest. Artworks only prompt understanding when they are seen as truth-tellers that carry meanings to question us and reveal new aspects of the world and ourselves.

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The development of hermeneutic skills involves the development of latent abilities in interpreting, understanding and applying what the other has to say. This is not the learning of a method, but education in the sense of ‘bringing out’ or ‘leading forth’ of latent abilities of judgement and evaluation by way of dialogue, in which the learner and the teacher and the learner and the text interact in a dialectic of question and answer that draws out meanings from the text and from within themselves.

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In this process we do not seek

to develop a sympathetic fellow-feeling for the other on the basis of the traits and attitudes we have in common and are therefore familiar, but, quite on the contrary, seek out what is radically different and unfamiliar in the other, using these dissimilarities and disparities to prompt a dialogical questioning of our own prejudices and to open up possibilities of changing and expanding our horizon. To recognise the otherness of the other, and to incorporate that otherness into our own horizon, is to achieve a true understanding of the other. This is not a matter of identifying with the other, or of being sympathetic to or even tolerant of his or her views or actions. It does not involve uncritical acceptance. A true understanding of the other can lead to a total rejection of what s/he stands for. What the other has to say can provoke a rejection of his or her prejudices on some matter, just as, in some cases, it might evoke a total rejection of our own. 163

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On the other hand, a rejection of the other’s prejudices after allowing them to question one’s own is not the same as rejecting them on the basis of an ‘objective criticism’. A gulf separates critical analysis from the hermeneutical enterprise. Critical analysis distances the alien and sees it as an inert and passive object that questions nothing. Hermeneutical inquiry, by contrast, is a process of questioning the alien even as it asks questions about ourselves. Critical analysis precisely equates the first of Gadamer’s three types of I–Thou relationship, and obstructs rather than enhances this dialogical exchange. Our lack of understanding of Asia does not arise from undeveloped critical faculties. Our research and educational traditions are founded in fostering skills of objective and analytical thought, but this does not enhance our understanding of what is foreign and unfamiliar. Understanding is not a matter of some supposedly unprejudiced objectivity, but of hermeneutical judgement, involving an interaction and mutual melding of our own and the other’s horizons. In sum, Gadamer’s notions concerning the fusion of horizons point to the need for a radical rethinking of the aims of Asian Studies. If his arguments are persuasive, Asian Studies should aim not only to provide a knowledge of language, factual information and skills in critical analysis, but also to foster in a learning and research community the dialectics of interpretation, in which what is alien in the text of the other becomes the starting point for a process of questioning the horizons of our own prejudicial world in the hope of expanding and transforming them.

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Chapter 9

A world of difference

Figure captions (clockwise from top left ) 1

Shrine complex, Ise, Japan

2

Main station, Porto, Portugal

3

Bas relief, Prambanan temple complex, Indonesia

4

Ginza district, Tokyo, Japan, 1985

5

Madrid airport, Spain

Chapter 9

A world of difference

Those who think seriously about architecture in the Asian context would probably subscribe to two notions: first, that the architectures of Asia and the Middle East are different from those of the West; and second, that architectural research and training should include study of and research into these different architectures. These two notions are not, however, as simple and straightforward as they might at first appear. They involve contradictions and paradoxes. In a range of disciplines – literary criticism, philosophy, cultural studies, anthropology, etc. – under the general rubric of post-colonial studies, writers have forcefully pointed out the risks, antinomies, problems, logical inconsistencies and, yes, self-serving hypocrisies, that inhere within the notion of the very possibility of talking about, teaching about or researching the ‘different’ or the ‘other’; and writers within the architectural discipline, picking up on the post-colonial literature, have pinpointed the problems in including studies of the different, other architectures in our canons. These questions are examined in an article that appeared in the

Architectural Theory Review, Esra Akcan’s ‘Critical Practice in the Global Era: 1

The Question Concerning “Other” Geographies’. This article is directly relevant to the theme of ‘difference’ and how this relates to the architectural canon. The article is most pertinent to the discussion here because it succinctly summarises the literature coming out of post-colonial studies on notions of inter-cultural discourse and shows how writers within our discipline have applied the findings to architecture. Akcan singles out three writers in the area of post-colonial theory who have had a profound influence on the architectural literature, namely 167

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Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak and Homi Bhabha, and we will commence this chapter by briefly summarising their arguments that are particularly relevant to notions of difference, and that have implications for the construction of curricula. It is to be understood that in what follows we are interpreting an interpretation of these three writers, namely Akcan’s. We are doing this for strategic reasons, to instigate a dialogue, and not because we believe that Akcan’s interpretations of these authors are final or definitive. So to believe would be, from a hermeneutical point of view, absurd. Let us start with Edward Said. In his famous book, Orientalism, Said indicated how representations of the ‘Orient’ by Western scholars constructed an imaginary boundary between ‘East’ and ‘West’, ‘us’ and the 2

‘other’. They counter-posed the irrational and barbaric ‘Orient’ against the rational and civilised Occidental Self. This opposition, says Said, is a Western construct, based on an illusory homogeneity of the ‘Orient’, disregarding its heterogeneity and complexity, its internal inconsistencies and oppositions, and replacing them with an essentialised, seamless and monolithic whole. This Western construct was erected, argues Said, for the control and organisation of colonial societies in the interests of economic domination and expansion. These arguments, 25 years after they were first put forward by Said, have become so much a part of the academic coinage that we do not need to give further details. Akcan gives a survey of the considerable number of architectural writings that have appeared since 1990, all of them produced under the influence of Said’s opus. These writings document the ideological history of colonial architecture in a number of Asian and Middle Eastern countries. They are all directed at demonstrating that architects who worked in the colonies not only produced an architecture designed as an instrument of control, but were intrinsically racist in their attitudes. The stories told in these books and articles follow a common theme: European architects demolished traditional urban fabric. This is so even, or even more, in those cases where there seemed to be a benign concern for the locals and their architectural traditions. These various authors show how programmes of conservation and replication of local architectural forms were thinly disguised means of winning over the sympathies of the colonised in order to control them more effectively. Underlying all these architectural endeavours was the unquestioned assumption that the European ways of doing things were the civilised standards for all peoples, were of a superior kind and universally applicable. Running as a sub-theme through these narratives on the misdeeds of Western architects in the period of colonialism is the notion of assimilation. When the architecture of the ‘other’ is not simply dismissed or ignored but is seen to be in some way admirable, whatever is admirable is explained, or 168

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explained away, by assimilating it within one’s own, thoroughly Western, frame of reference. Turning to Spivak, her seminal work in this connection is the article 3

‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ Akcan does not indicate the context of Spivak’s article, and perhaps it is helpful to do so. The article is a response to, and calls into question the validity of the so-called ‘subaltern historians’, such as Ranajit Guha, who aimed to write an Indian history that was not filtered through the Western lens of the élites, the British raj and the Indian intellectuals who had received a European education. The so-called ‘subaltern’ group of historians aimed to write Indian history by reference to the Indian masses, unschooled and unskilled in the thought of the West. These masses were represented by the subalterns, the indigenous lower ranks of the Indian army during the colonial period, when the officers were exclusively British. This discourse is conducted in the long shadow of Marx. Guha and the subaltern group of Indian historians were concerned to write a history of the dispossessed masses. It is in this Marxist forum that Spivak wished to demonstrate that the flaw in this approach to history is that the masses have no voice, and therefore cannot be heard. In this she is reiterating Marx’s dictum that the masses cannot make their class interests valid without the 4

formation of a unified class subject. The subalterns cannot speak, they have no voice, because the only language of utterance and thought that is taken as having validity is that of the oppressors, represented by the English officers. Since the subalterns cannot speak on their own behalf, in their own voice, when the historian claims to speak for them, s/he perpetuates their silencing, since s/he too speaks in the manner of the officers and from a Western perspective and in the cadences of a Western-style education, using the patterns of thought of the élite. Further, the subaltern cannot be spoken about, because this speaking is likewise in the voice of the oppressor, and already predisposed to speak for the subaltern in the interests of the structures of power set up by the colonial masters. The other, to use Akcan’s phrase, ‘is unspeakable’. The subaltern, the ‘other’, cannot be represented because every representation has already been assimilated within the dominant discourse. Before difference can be expressed, it has always already been negated by having been absorbed in advance within the same. Extrapolating from this, every attempt to represent the ‘other’ within one’s own ‘Western’ system of 5

references is ‘an assimilation of the incommensurable into the familiar’; and every attempt to let the other speak for himself is similarly vitiated in advance. Such a speaking by or of the ‘other’ is not possible because it must fit within pre-formed matrices which do not allow for difference to remain. The only option for the scholar, says Spivak, is a ‘continuous deferral’ in a Derridean sense, in which everything about, or supposedly on 169

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behalf of, the other, is always already under erasure, held in a state of ‘continuous suspension’ which ‘demands admitting the necessity of representing the “non-West”, while simultaneously questioning the very 6

possibility of this representation’. Such discourse must forever remain inconclusive and in a state of open-ended suspension. As a correlate, this state of suspension must involve a deep critique of the Self and the whole notion of the Western Subject. Homi Bhabha approaches the problem from a different angle. In 7

his article, ‘The Commitment to Theory’, he distinguishes cultural diversity and cultural difference. The notion of difference, as defined by Bhabha, has negative connotations. It ‘focuses on the problem of the ambivalence of cultural authority: the attempt to dominate in the name of a cultural supremacy which 8

is itself produced only in the moment of differentiation’. To think in terms of cultural difference is to think in terms of the degree to which the other differs from our familiar own, taken as the norm and implicitly, the superior. To think in terms of cultural diversity, by contrast, is to compare cultures on the basis of pre-given cultural contexts and customs ‘… giv[ing] rise to liberal notions of multi-culturalism, culture exchange or the culture of 9

humanity’.

One might feel reassured by the appearance of such comforting notions as multi-culturalism, culture exchange and the culture of humanity. We have been taught that these are to be regarded as ideals. The writings of Bhabha are not the place, however, to seek reassurances or comforting notions. The idea of cultural diversity, he says, gives rise to the delusion that every culture without exception can be represented by reference to a single system of reference, our own. The notion of cultural difference, on the other hand, is equally problematic. It implies that the other culture, because different, cannot be compared with our own system of reference. Any comparison is impossible. Being different, there is nothing to compare. Those critics who wish to avoid the pitfall of recognising the ‘non-West’ by a process of assimilation into the Western system of reference must concentrate on difference – but this precludes comparison. Another double bind. These arguments obviously present major obstacles for thought about the introduction of the study of Middle Eastern and Asian architecture into architectural curricula and research programmes. To think of these other architectures as diverse and/or different already betrays a Eurocentric viewpoint: to speak of their diversity pre-assumes a Western standard or norm by which they can be measured, thus involving, by stealth as it were, notions of exclusion and superiority; and to speak of them as different makes them incomparable, and therefore banishes them from the discourse. These lines of argument seem to rule out the possibility of including non-Western architecture in the discourses of the profession. Even 170

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to refer to such architecture is suspect, since the very notion of architecture is a construct that comes from Europe, and from Europe of the last few centuries at that. As soon as I start looking at the buildings of other places, other times, and counting them as ‘architecture’ (with or without the capital A), I am subsuming them within a category invented in Europe. By even acknowledging that they are architecture, I am judging them according to Western criteria of architectural excellence; I am appropriating them into the Western-constructed category ‘architecture’, a category that is governed by a Western canon of rules and criteria. Whether these readings of Said, Spivak and Bhabha are accurate is beside the point. These interpretations, or similar, are those which have been accepted and taken to heart by writers in the architectural literature. When we examine the extensive list of works compiled by Akcan, it becomes apparent that they all accept at face value the unspeakability of the Other. They tell us nothing about the local and indigenous architectures of the colonized peoples; they do not even peripherally engage with those architectures but refer exclusively to the architecture imposed by colonial masters. The literature is directed inwards to Western architects and earlier Western writings on architecture in order to expose their Eurocentric biases. These works are, that is to say, histories of Western events. They tell us how Western architects acted in colonial situations. They tell us nothing of the colonised, who are simply not there, but have disappeared, as if they had no culture or architecture before or during the European imposition of power. They are as if passive, non-reactive recipients of a wholly unidirectional power deployed by a hegemonic invader. Further, the activities and designs of the architects working in the colonies are judged by criteria deriving from discourses of a wholly Western provenance; their theoretical underpinnings derive from Western thinkers or from thinkers (like Said, Spivak and Bhabha) who are Western in training, thought processes and method. The focus is on Western actions, only distinguished by a nonWestern geographical location. It is as if the Orient, having been misrepresented in the past in the interests of economic expansion and control, is now, in the service of Marxistderived critical theory, consigned to an amnesiac oblivion, the realm of the ‘unspeakable’. This self-centred gaze has its correlate in proposals for changes in the curricula of architecture schools. When, as frequently happens in the literature cited by Akcan, reference is made to the ways in which the curricula might be changed in architectural schools to allow for a study of non-Western architectures untainted by Orientalist proclivities, the emphasis is invariably self-centred, calling for an investigative and critical analysis of the existing canon in order to unmask its exclusionary theories and practices, 171

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its Eurocentrism, and so on. Only when the canon has been reduced to ground zero, the argument seems to run, will it be possible to construct a new canon that is inclusive. In this view, for the researcher or teacher who has accepted that the excluded is unspeakable, the one and only acceptable subject for study or writing is the history of how the West has excluded others. However, even this circumscribed course of investigation can lead into yet another double bind. If the representation of the ‘non-Western’ in a Western language (mode of discourse) is ruled out, then even the notion of speaking about the exclusion of the ‘non-Western’ itself becomes an exercise in speaking the unspeakable, talking about something that cannot be talked about, that is, it is the practice of the prohibited. As they relate to architectural scholarship, the post-colonialist writings such as those of Said, Spivak and Bhabha seem to have led to the loss of nerve that arises when you find yourself in an impasse. A ‘non-Western’ architecture is ‘unrepresentable’, and can only be spoken of while at the same time recognising that it cannot be spoken about. We are damned if we engage in a study of the Orient, and damned if we don’t; damned if we include Asian content in curricula and research programmes, since this is to declare the Asian as ‘other’ thus to reinforce the ways in which we define ourselves and establish our identity by setting up an imagined alien; and we are damned if we ignore the other and turn exclusively to talking about ourselves. Given these injunctions, writers have chosen not to speak of such things at all, and turn back to safer ground. In this way, in architecture at least, Orientalism has given way to an academically sanctioned cultural isolationism. The paradox is that this extreme form of Eurocentrism has developed in the name of rooting out Eurocentrism. It is a new form of Orientalism that functions by an exclusion of the Orient and solely by reference to Western preoccupations. It leaves the Western discourse as the only game in town. Western exclusivist preoccupations become more deeply entrenched; and the trend to the globalisation of Western norms and practices of architecture is strengthened. The intention of this chapter is not to mount a critique of Said, Spivak and Bhabha. This has been done by others, and there is a large literature following the critical line. Having noted that post-colonialist writings have acted to inhibit the study of non-Western architectures, we are interested to see if there are other readings, other interpretations, of the relation between the West and its Other that are enabling rather than disabling of Oriental studies in architecture. We do this by reference to understandings coming from hermeneutical philosophy. To start, it is possible to re-interpret Said’s claim that Orientalists have constructed an Orient that doesn’t exist except in their imagination. First, 172

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it should be noted that Orientalists did not work in a textless vacuum; their interpretations, whether or not they serve interests of power, are not merely or exclusively the products of imagination, but are interpretations, and interpretations of ‘objects’ that are ‘out there’. Let us, by analogy, call these ‘objects’ of their study ‘texts’. The Orientalist constructs are not entirely makebelieve, because they correspond to texts that exist outside the West. If this is so, then the Orientalist constructs are interpretations of these texts, and the question becomes not a matter of error or pure construction, but of whether the interpretation is a good one or otherwise. In hermeneutics the value of an interpretation, or a representation, is whether it expands our understanding, and in this sense whether it is enabling or disabling. They are not in error because they don’t match some urgrund facticity – what is ‘really there’ – but because they are poor translations of a culture or the product of a culture, just as a poor interpretation of a work of music is judged to be so not necessarily because it distorts the musical score to such a degree that it is unrecognisable, but because it doesn’t do it justice. It is judged that there are better ways of interpreting the score. Assertions concerning Orientalist ‘constructs’ that are biased for self-interest seem to presuppose the possibility of some unbiased state. This, as we have shown, is itself an imagined construct, but unlike those of the Orientalists, one that has no basis in anything that exists outside its intellectual formulations. Said makes the valuable observation that it is characteristic of Orientalists to regard the Orient as a homogeneous entity that stands over against the West. The heterogeneity and complexity of the East, its internal inconsistencies and oppositions, are ignored and replaced with an essentialised, seamless and monolithic whole. Thus Middle Eastern or Asian architecture is conceived as something that stands over against Western architecture. It should not be forgotten, however, that to speak of ‘Western architecture’ follows the same homogenising trajectory. It is similarly to conceive of Western architecture as a monolithic, seamless entity. A hermeneut would agree that the ascription of the status of a meta-text which is taken as representative of the Middle East or Asia as monolithic wholes, is a disabling interpretation. S/he would be aware that s/he must interpret a text as s/he finds it, avoiding the temptation to cobble together essentialising abstractions and generalisations. At the same time, the hermeneut will not see this essentialising and homogenising propensity as vitiating the interpretational endeavour per se, realising that interpretation and the understanding that arises from it are the basis of our very being: we are interpreting beings and we are what we understand. Lacking an ability to interpret, we would not be; and to curb our inbuilt ability to interpret is to inhibit the ontological ground of being itself. 173

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To say that the Orientalist texts construct a seamless Orient that does not exist might be true, but the Orientalist ‘error’ in this is to suppose that the texts they study are representative of some larger and homogeneous whole, which is thought of as possessing ‘essential’ characteristics. That is to say, they construct an imagined reality from the texts they study, going beyond their confines into a realm of abstraction; they presuppose a meta-text. They do not accept that there is no text that stands beyond the ones they are presently interpreting and translating. This construction of a meta-text is the reverse face of a proclivity of the post-colonial critical thinkers, that is, what has been called ‘the hermeneutics of suspicion’, in which the aim of investigation is to rip away the mask of colonialist actions, even if seemingly benign, to expose the true working of domination and power it conceals. Thus Said unmasks the way in which Orientalists were not studying, as they claimed, in a spirit of disinterested objectivity, but constructed the Orient in the interests of colonial expansion and control. If, however, Orientalist texts are ‘masks’, so is every representation, every interpretation, without exception and all the way down. There is no ultimate, original, ‘real’ face behind the masks. Ripping away a mask only reveals another, which in turn is the mask of a mask. Interpretations, representations, masks, are all that we have, but this does not mean that we cannot understand them in new and fruitful ways. The argument that the Western representations of the Orient are Western constructs does not mean that Orientalists are wholly blind to anything outside their own horizon of understanding, since they deal with texts that are other, even if that ‘otherness’ is only a matter of geographical provenance. There is nothing to prevent us from reinterpreting those and other texts in a manner that is more enabling and increases rather than diminishes our understanding. Hermeneutics has no difficulty with Spivak’s recourse to Derrida’s notion of continuous deferral in the reading of the text of the other. Derrida’s famous notion of différance, which neologism compounds ‘to differ’ and ‘to defer’, connotes that the meaning of the text comes from difference but never reaches closure. Meaning is forever deferred. So likewise, hermeneutics asserts, there is no final, definitive interpretation of a text, but only new interpretations that bring out new aspects, and which can be added to, or superseded. Hermeneutics could add to Derrida’s wordplay that brings together ‘difference’ and ‘deferral’. From the same root as these is the word ‘deference’, and for hermeneutics any interpretation of a text not only involves a recognition of difference and deferral, but also deference. The task of the interpreter is to discern how the text differs from others and those that are familiar, recognising that the study of the text is rewarding to the degree that 174

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these differences are present. In adopting these strategies, the hermeneut acknowledges difference and also deferral of absolute meaning and continually deferring any claim to having captured and exhausted its meaning. As well as these strategies the hermeneut is required to approach the text with deference, that is, the anticipation that it is worth studying because it has something to tell us, that it can enlarge our understanding and therefore, in that sense, has valid claims to being true. Hermeneutics would agree with Derrida that there can be no final closure to the meaning of the text – it expresses this in its insistence that there is no definitive and final interpretation of a text, that there is no original text, each text being a representation or a re-interpretation of a prior text. There are as many interpretations as there are interpreters – and as many interpretations as there are texts, each mirroring a mirror in a hall of mirrors. But this doesn’t mean that the reality of the text disappears in a confusion of inter-reflections. An interpretation is always the interpretation of a text, a text with which I engage in dialogue.

Difference We turn now to the notion of ‘difference’. (Once again, we are considering Akcan’s interpretation.) The notion that the different cannot speak, and that therefore they are unspeakable, seems to presuppose the existence of an absolute difference, but difference is always a matter of degree. There is no such thing as absolute difference. Leibniz pointed out that, logically speaking, there can be no such thing as identity. If two things were absolutely identical they would not be different things but the same, they would not be two but one. In a similar vein, Plato said that no two things are ever equal, because we have never experienced the equality of two things: if they were exactly equal they would be the same. Reversing the argument, if two things are absolutely different they would not relate in any way. Anything that was absolutely different from us would not exist for us. It would not simply be incommensurable or unspeakable, but non-existent. So the subaltern was never wholly different. There was always the possibility of communication between the subaltern and the officer, however minimal. By the same token there always existed the possibility of some understanding. Another link with hermeneutical thinking is gained by a close reading of Bhabha. Pace Akcan, his analyses of diversity and difference are not the end of the story; they do not close off the possibility of dialogue. They are intended to speak against the tendency to essentialise and stereotype the other, to hide the other’s heterogeneity and complexity by way of a reduction 175

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to a monolithic, seamless homogeneity. In this connection Bhabha speaks of the hybridity of cultures: each is a mixture of different, and often opposing, cultural currents. It is in what he calls a Third Space, the space that intervenes between two cultures, that interactions take place between them, both hybrid in themselves. These interactions result in a third hybridity. With talk of a Third Space, the hybrid space of cultural exchange and interaction, we are in a territory familiar to students of hermeneutics. Hermeneutic theory is well aware that understanding of another takes place by way of a fusion of cultural horizons, a fusion that takes place in a space that simultaneously joins and separates. This space, where horizons of understanding overlap, is the place of encounter, of exchange, and of mergings of viewpoint that result in the production of a new, hybrid understanding of the other, and oneself. Encounters in this mid-space change the mind-set of each of those who enter it and who are prepared to play the games of encounter and exchange. The Japanese notion of ma, discussed in Chapter 12, carries associations of this type. Ma is a space-time of ambiguity, of mixing, of fusion and yet separation of what comes before and after. The space of encounter is one of hybridity, melding and ambiguity, but at the same time it is one of separation, definition and clarity.

Objectivity Post-colonial thinkers accuse Orientalists of stereotyping the other so as to fit the matrices of their own preconceptions. Orientalist endeavours, in this view, are merely expressions of self-serving prejudice. From a hermeneutical perspective, however, this accusation must be approached with caution. It presupposes that there exists the possibility of an unprejudiced understanding, and for hermeneutics such an untainted understanding is unattainable, an impossibility. As we have seen in earlier chapters, for me to understand what you are saying as we talk to each other I must involve my own conceptions and preconceptions, for the very simple reason that it is not possible to do otherwise. This rules out the possibility of understanding you by listening to you disinterestedly and objectively. I can only understand what you say by the mediation of my own viewpoint, fashioned by my own history. A scholar who claims to be unprejudiced and objective in his or her study of some foreign cultural phenomenon denies that s/he has a personal history that affects what s/he understands the phenomenon to mean; and this denial defers the application of the interpretation as a questioning of his or her own situation. According to Gadamer, this application, taking what the other 176

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says as a questioning of our own prejudices, is the only true event of understanding. Applying this to the study of alien cultures, the alien other is no longer seen as a static and passive object from which we can extract a monosemic meaning to be used for our own purposes of manipulation, but is seen as an inexhaustible source of ever-changing and polysemic possibilities for changing not only our understanding of the other culture, but of our own. Difference is essential for understanding to take place. When I enter into conversation with you I have certain expectations of how the conversation will turn out and of the boundaries (horizons) that will define it. However, if everything you say coincides exactly with my prior expectations, the conversation will not be in any sense a dialogical exchange of views, but merely polite small talk. It is only when you say things that are unfamiliar, strange or unintelligible that my interest is engaged. It is only when what you say calls my prejudices into question that I sit up and take notice. The apparent eccentricity or abnormality of what you say contains the possibility, the potentiality, of having our horizons of understanding remapped. If this change is to take place, however, I must resist the temptation to an overhasty assimilation of what you say with my own expectations of meaning, and listen carefully, allowing the meaning of what you say to come through. This is a process of maximising the tension between my own familiar horizon, and your unfamiliar one. I must avoid a premature absorption of what you are saying within my own horizon before fully recognising the way in which it differs from my own familiar ways of viewing things; and I must contrast it with my view. Only then can what you say be fruitfully fused with my own horizon. To repeat, when I understand something new in a dialogue, it is because I have first become aware that what you are saying is different from what I expect, and second, that it has fused with my own understanding. When we look at this a little more closely, we realise that this expansion of my horizon is effected by responding to what is unknown or unfamiliar in what you say. The unfamiliarity of what you say questions me, invites me to venture into the unknown and the unfamiliar. In heeding the question, I travel into an unfamiliar, foreign world, entering it to see what is to be discovered. In any true dialogue, whether with a text, a person, another country, another architecture, we wander in unexplored territory, not with the intention of annexing it, but of returning home to our own familiar horizons which are now seen in a new way because of what we have seen elsewhere.

10

In the fusion of horizons that takes place in any event of understanding, not only is it not possible to come to the encounter with the other with an unprejudiced mind, but also it is not possible simply to appropriate what the other is saying in an unchanged form. The process of 177

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understanding it transforms it to a greater or less degree, alters it so that it can fit within the structure of our pre-existing understandings, even though this structure is itself changed by this fusion. The process of transformation that takes place when there is an understanding of the unfamiliar is a translation from one mode of understanding, that of the other, into our own. Etymologically ‘translation’ is a carrying across, but what is carried across does not remain unaltered in its relocating. Every encounter in which understanding of the other arises involves a translation in this sense. Ideas are carried across from one to the other, not as in an act of plunder, but as when ideas are carried from one cultural context to another. In a translation of a text from one language to another, the new version never matches the original in an exact manner but only approximates it; so similarly the understanding I have of the other can never be the understanding she has of herself. But this divergence of understanding is not something to be deplored, since it is precisely the differences in our understanding that make conversation with you possible, and the greater the differences the greater the likelihood that the conversation will be animated. Parenthetically, it is to be noted that in order to translate, the translator must understand the language of the text being translated. The process of acquiring another language is itself a fusion of horizons in which the unfamiliar became familiar and understandable. Translation itself thus becomes 11

a metaphor for all interpretative, which is to say hermeneutical, processes.

Gadamer’s three modes of dialogue As we saw in Chapter 8 (The fusion of horizons), Gadamer argues that there are three modes of dialogue with the other: that in which the other is treated as wholly separate and as an object to be manipulated and governed (as in the colonial setting); that in which one speaks for the other, in the belief that one already understands what the other will say before she says it; and that in which one enters into a two-way conversation, listening carefully to what the other says in the expectations that one’s understanding will be enhanced. The post-colonialist critique of Orientalism, at least as interpreted by Akcan, seems to limit the possibilities of inter-cultural dialogue to the first two of these modes: the Orientalist either studies other cultures as if they were objects for scientific study, or speaks on their behalf and in a manner that assimilates them to pre-inscribed frameworks of prejudice by way of a cultural appropriation. In each case, others are not allowed to speak for themselves and are silenced. These are, therefore, two modes of pseudo-dialogue. The third mode of dialogue, conversation, is a true dialectical exchange. The words ‘converse’ and ‘convert’ come from the same Latin word 178

A world of difference

con-vertere, ‘to turn together, or jointly’. A conversation is a conversion, in which we both turn to see things from a new direction, and in a new way. This takes place when I fully accept you as a person with something to say, and listen to you with an openness that accepts that what you are saying is meaningful and true, and that it contains a truth that differs from what I think to be true and is for that reason something that could change the way I see 12

things.

What this means in the context of the dialogue that takes place between a scholar and the alien culture s/he studies is that s/he must be prepared to acknowledge the validity of its claims to possess truth (the ‘deference’ we examined earlier),

13

and this not simply by acknowledging

that the other culture is different, that is, by recognising its otherness, but also to acknowledge that the other culture has something true and important to say to me. This openness to what you say to me prevents me from a naïve appropriation on my part of what you are saying, assimilating it with the way I already think, fitting it into my familiar patterns of understanding, and thus disallowing or ignoring the differences that make you unique and denying that you have anything new to offer my understanding. In a true conversation there is reciprocal questioning, either implicit or explicit. Everything you say questions my present understandings; and I question you to open up new aspects of what you are saying. In a spirited conversation this back-and-forth of question and answer takes over, and carries us both along so that you and I are involved in the discussion to such a degree that we are no longer conscious that we are separate. When fully taken up and involved in absorbing conversation you and I become a we. If true conversation is one of question and answer, then the scholar or teacher who wishes to enter into a conversation with an alien culture must act in the manner of an interlocutor in a Platonic dialogue, opening up questions, questioning what s/he finds there, but, more importantly, allowing what is found to question his or her accepted notions. In a conversation proceeding by way of reciprocal interrogation and responses neither of the speakers is dominating the other but enters into an exchange based on genuine interest in what the other has to say. Similarly, a scholar or teacher is not necessarily speaking for or dominating the other when s/he writes or teaches about the other. The writing or teaching may be, rather, an attempt to translate what the other is saying in as accurate and sympathetic manner as is possible. The scholar is able to enter into a dialogue with another culture without commandeering the discussion and assimilating it to prior expectations. Hermeneutical metaphors of the manner in which we come to an understanding of the other and the different release us from the inhibitions 179

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imposed by metaphors of power and domination. There are other ways than these of interpreting our relationship to the alien, ways that do not lead us to the conclusion that it is necessary to avoid encounter with the other or eschew difference, or to the conclusion that we are compelled to root out all vestiges of Western prejudice before we can begin to research Asian and Middle Eastern architecture. Whatever is different is to be celebrated, for difference is the substrate of all understanding. Without difference there is nothing to understand; and without respectful deference for what is different, there is no understanding. The world we understand is a world of difference; and to understand that makes a world of difference.

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Chapter 10

Myth, mandala and metaphor

Figure captions (clockwise from top left ) 1

Schematic plan of Borobudur

2

Geometrical derivation of the mandala

3

Prambanan temple complex, Indonesia

4

Bas relief, Prambanan temple complex, Indonesia

5–7

Terraces of Borobudur, Indonesia

Chapter 10

Myth, mandala and metaphor

As is well known, much of the architecture influenced by Hindu and Buddhist 1

thought is intimately associated with myth. Although some of the greatest architectural achievements in Asia are inspired and regulated by myth and have myth engrained in every aspect of their plans and forms, these buildings receive little or no attention in university courses on architectural history and theory. This neglect might be the result of a Eurocentric exclusivism, now engrained in architectural education, even in Asia, but also possibly stems from discomfort felt when confronted by the ‘irrationality’ of the myths that engender this architecture. Some architectural historians and theorists might well be embarrassed by mythopoeic modes of thought, seeing them as expressions of ‘beliefs’ that are neither true nor meaningful, but as giving explanations of the world that modern science has rendered obsolete and negligible. In this view, the architectural forms generated by myth are so closely associated with exotic and antiquated beliefs and customs, now falsified by science, that they defy translation into any terms relevant for the present practice of architecture. Given our contemporary outlook, is it possible for us to take seriously the proposition that the temple is a mountain which stands at the centre of the world on the back of a giant turtle swimming in an ocean of 2

milk? What are we to make of the statement that such-and-such a building depicts the cosmos as quartered by four great rivers that flow out from the central mountain through the mouths of a lion, a horse, an elephant and a 3

man? Can we identify with the outlook of architects for whom these notions were not figures of speech or imaginative tropes, but realities that played 4

into every aspect of daily life? The mythic themes embodied in the 183

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architecture might impress us as rich and powerful fictions, but certainly cannot to be taken as ‘true’ in any sense that makes sense here and now. In the cold hard light of modernity, they are absurdities. Myth, therefore, can have little to do with architecture. It is at best a form of story telling, to be interpreted by ethnologists or literary critics. Asian architecture, if it is to find a place in the architectural curricula, must be studied and taught according to the Western criteria of aesthetics, function and construction. On the other hand, no understanding of the architecture of Asia and many other places can begin without taking myth into consideration. Myth is not simply added on to the Asian building, but forms its integral essence and reason for existing. Myth inheres within rather than adheres to the architecture. To attempt to consider Asian architecture in the absence of myth is already to misunderstand what it is intended to do and what it was intended to convey; it erases the meanings the building had for those who built it; and it subverts, in advance, anything the building might add to our architectural understanding. To study Asian architecture for its aesthetic, functional, constructional and historical aspects while bracketing out its mythic and fantastic content or treating that content as literature, is to exclude from attention precisely those things that would have meant most to its builders.

Theories of myth The problem with myth is that it does not appear to be true in any sense that makes sense for us. Most theories of myth take it for granted that they are 5

outmoded and primitive forms of mental activity. They do not acknowledge the possibility that myth could play more than a makeshift role in the history of thought, or that it might still have a present relevance. On the other hand, when we see the architectural splendors that myth has spawned, perhaps we should pause and ask if these marvels could be engendered by nothing more than a false reading of the way the world works, or by arcane and antiquated modes of thinking. Some clue to an alternative and more sympathetic understanding of myth is given by the phenomenologists of religion, such as Van der Leeuw, Leenhardt, Gusdorf and Ricoeur, for whom myth functions to discover and reveal the bond that connects man and the sacred. Eliade, for example, speaks of myth as the narration of a sacred history of originary events, a history that 6

cosmicises chaos and locates homo religiosus in his world. These phenomenological readings are willing to admit that myth might still have relevance for us today. 184

Myth, mandala and metaphor

Demythologisation Bultmann questions this assumption. He takes myth as a text to be interpreted and understood; but, he says, a text cannot be understood, nor an inquiry into its meaning begin, if it does not relate to the life and life-world 7

of the interpreter. Interpretations are sustained by the prior understandings of the interpreter and depend on his or her interest in the subject matter. Whether this interest is historical, psychological, aesthetic or whatever else, it is indispensable for interpretation to commence. This is to say that we necessarily interpret a text so that it has meaning for our own life situation, for our present location in a historical context, and that without such relevance no understanding is possible. Myths, however, are formulated in ways that we can no longer accept since they conflict with our self-understanding and our understanding of the world in which we live. Science, technology, modern Western notions concerning the nature of the individual self and the development of historical consciousness have irrevocably changed our view of the world and how it is structured. If myth is to be understood today it must be interpreted in ways that relate to our present existential condition. This reinterpretation of myth in accordance with modern concerns and preconceptions Bultmann calls 8

‘demythologisation’. He does not mean by this a process of discarding, reducing, allegorising or rationalising the myth, but signifies an existential reinterpretation of its mythological elements, involving the recognition that the real purpose of the myth is not to give an objective account of the world, but to express how humankind understands itself in relation to the lived-world. Demythologisation rejects the validity of the myth as a description of objective reality, but understands it in terms of its genuine purpose, which is to give an understanding of existence. 9

Ricoeur also stresses the need for demythologisation. We cannot, he says, go back to a naive and uncritical belief in the myth, but nevertheless we can, by way of critical interpretation, regain our ability to ‘hear’ what the myth says. This is achieved by recognising its symbolic content. Demythologisation, in Ricoeur’s view, proceeds by dissolving the myth as an explanation of the objective world, expunging its pseudo-scientific and pseudo-historical elements, and penetrating the symbolic content in order to restore its meaning. This involves deciphering the symbol, not with the aim of demystifying it or exorcising it of illusions, but of showing how it relates to present-day pre-assumptions.

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Myth and bonding How would demythologisation work out in practice in the case of the myths associated with Hindu and Buddhist architecture? How can they be related to our contemporary existential condition, to our modern lived-world? Is it possible to penetrate their symbolic content to expunge their pseudo-explanations of the nature and origins of the world without at the same time robbing them of the content that made them significant for the Hindus and Buddhists who used them as generators of built forms? Any programme of demythologisation would seem to be just that: a retelling of myth that leaves out its mythic content, making it something other than myth. Demythologisation would seem necessarily to involve a reductive denaturing of the myth. Joseph Kockelmans has suggested a strategy for rehabilitating the relevance of myth without destroying its cohesive fullness. This rejects approaches that cut myth from its encompassing lived-world, isolate it as an object for analysis and assess it as true or false according to its correspondence with objective physical realities. Instead, it considers myth 10

not as an object, but in Heidegger’s phrase, as ready-to-hand, as embedded 11

in the life-world of humans, and related to basic modes of being-in-the-world.

According to Kockelmans, we turn to myth because of our ‘thrownness’ (Geworfenheit) from the past,

12

recognising that we have been projected into

a bewildering world in which we seem powerless. In this context of uncertainty and impotence myth can act as a bonding agent that connects us 13

with the world and enables us to cope.

Myth, in this account, is a story that

locates us in the world of our experienced existence. Such an approach to myth poses no threat to its holistic nature and affords it the possibility of retaining – or regaining – relevance in the contemporary world. An interpretation of myth in terms of being-in-the-world reveals its radical ontological status and preserves an adequate sense of its global and holistic fullness. In this perspective the function of myth is not descriptive or explanatory, but hermeneutical. Myth provides ways of understanding the world; it enables interpretation. This is not to say that myth is itself an interpretation of the world, but rather that it articulates a horizon of understanding in which interpretation can take place. For Kockelmans: If something is to be interpreted, it is to be taken as something or other. In order to be able to take x as y, I need a horizon of meaning in which x may appear as y. A myth can provide such a horizon, although it is obviously not the only form of understanding which can provide us with such a world.

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Myth, mandala and metaphor

In such an interpretation, myth is seen as a basic mode of and essential prerequisite for understanding the world in which we live; it opens up horizons of meaning that are closed over to empirical and objective research; and it functions in a holistic way to reveal the bond that connects humankind and the environing context.

15

Myth, unlike science or history, is not directly concerned with concrete phenomena or events in the world, but is a way of understanding that is typically directed towards a total meaningfulness, a totally unified world. Myth is a store of the symbols of completeness and plenitude which man intends, aims for, but can never fully experience. To treat myth as an object to be analysed and reassembled is to fragment and negate these holistic qualities and tendencies to plenitude. On the other hand, an interpretational approach that is aware of the coincidence of the mythic mode of being and humans’ mode of being-in-the-world maintains myth’s global and holistic fullness and at the same time allows it a place in the everyday circumspective world. In the hermeneutical perspective, myth is disclosive in that it functions to open up possibilities of interpretation and action, articulating otherwise inaccessible determinants of understanding and thought. Further, it plays a social function in bringing to light meanings that provide a basis for 16

the shared sensus communis of hermeneutical communities and for a sense of social continuity as its disclosive function is transmitted from one 17

generation to another.

In summary, Kockelmans proposes that myth, functioning as a mode of being-in-the-world, acts to bond both individuals and societies with the world of everyday experience. Taken in this sense, myth is an essential 18

component of both individual and societal understanding.

Bonding and metaphor-structure Kockelmans’ insights open up a space for a reappraisal of myths and the architecture they generate. Further steps are needed, however, if their meanings are to be given present relevance. Hermeneutics specifies that understanding can only begin from a base of pre-understandings. The interpreter brings a horizon of historically wrought forestructures of understanding to the event of interpretation, and no understanding can arise unless what we are attempting to understand relates in some way to those forestructures. A meaningful interpretation of myth-inspired architecture, therefore, is only possible if it has some relevance to the modes of our own present understanding. As Bultmann says, if myth does not relate in some way to our lived-world, it must remain basically incomprehensible. 187

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The task confronting the interpreter who wishes to understand architecture that embodies myth is to seek some way in which it bonds with our present-day lived experience and understanding. We suggest that one way of doing this is to be found in recent theories of metaphor-structure expressed 19

in terms of the hermeneutical circle.

If we take metaphor not as a trope, as

a mere figure of speech or figure of thought, but as a structure, a ‘seeing-as’, 20

that is, the seeing of a thing as something, a play of metaphor.

21

then the hermeneutical circle is

The repetitive acts of projecting anticipations of the

whole from the parts and reflecting back the anticipated wholes to effect new understandings of the parts are functions of metaphoricity, in which the parts are seen as a whole and the whole is seen as the parts. The hermeneutic circle is a repeated cycle of metaphor projection. Metaphor-structure inheres in every hermeneutical event. Every act of understanding is a ‘seeing-as’, a ‘seeing’ or ‘sensing’ of one thing as something else: a sound is heard as a baby’s cry, the screech of a tyre or a meaningful speech pattern; a shape is seen as a circle or triangle; as we read we see the marks on the page as meanings.

22

At all levels of understanding,

from simple perception through to the interpretation of texts, we are constantly interpreting things by way of a projection of meaning, a projection that has the structure of metaphor. Taken in this fashion the ‘as-structure’ of metaphor is primordial and universal. It operates not only in the understanding of language and texts, but also in the understanding of sensation, cognition and logic.

23

Processes

of metaphorical understanding are radically fundamental to all human perception, thought and action. Metaphor, functioning by way of the hermeneutical circle, is ‘prior’ to the use of logic, formal languages and scientific method; it is a primordial mode of rationality. One’s whole life can be seen as an ongoing process of understanding, of interpreting experiences 24

by way of metaphor. Metaphoricity structures every act of interpretation and without it no interpretation would be possible. It enables us to make sense of juxtapositions of concepts, words, images, a text and its context, the parts and the whole of some gestalt, or between two networks of statements or two complex conceptual systems.

25

The use of metaphor is not merely one of our activities in the world, but is basic to everything we do and are. Metaphor-structure acts in every kind of experience gathering and in every mode of cognitive acquisition, including the acquisition of language. It operates in all exposition and in all learning. The operation of the hermeneutical circle of metaphoricity is not instrumental. It is not something we can choose to use or not, in the manner of a tool. It is, rather, embedded in thought and action; and no thought or action would be possible without it. To elucidate the workings of this structure, 188

Myth, mandala and metaphor

therefore, is not to formulate an alternative to the positivist and rationalist model of interpretation but is, rather, simply to indicate what is operating in every act of understanding, operating at such a basic and radical level that it cannot be dispensed with, cannot be rejected or accepted. To speak of choosing to use it is as meaningless as to speak of the acceptance or rejection of gravity. The hermeneutical circle of metaphor projection is an intrinsic, pervasive and indispensable component in all our dealings with the world in both its objective and circumspective aspects. It enables us to cope with the situations into which we are thrown; it is fundamental to our mode of being, to our being-in-the-world; and it is the means whereby the being is bonded with the lived-world.

26

Myth, metaphor-structure and affirmation/denial According to objectivist formulations, statements can be demonstrated to be true or false by drawing out their logical inferences. By this criterion, metaphors are false statements; they escape the bounds of logical inference; they allow no drawing of hard and fast conclusions. A metaphor simultaneously makes an assertion and denies it, so that ‘man is a wolf … (but) is not a wolf’, and ‘a house is a machine … (but) is not a machine’. Metaphors thwart logical interpretation. In the terms of logic, therefore, metaphors express something false and are therefore nonsense. Yet our everyday experience tells us that metaphors are not ‘untrue’ and that they are not nonsense, since we understand them. We somehow manage to grasp what they are about, 27

despite their failure to meet logical criteria.

Some theorists have attempted to explain, or explain away, the paradox presented by metaphor, by positing a hidden logic that can be unearthed by such stratagems as reformulating them in literal assertions that can be tested for their truth. This ‘comparison theory’ of metaphor, as we have shown elsewhere,

28

does not stand up to scrutiny. Metaphor withstands

every attempt at logical analysis. There is no way round the difficulty that metaphor simultaneously denies what it affirms; it is always an ‘is’ and an ‘is not’.

29

It is precisely the coincidentia oppositorum inherent in metaphorstructure that gives it a disclosive potency, enabling it to open up new ways of understanding the world. The ‘is’ of the metaphor locates understanding within a bounded context; the ‘is not’ allows understanding to range freely, to expand the horizons of the context, to break out of the bonds imposed by 189

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the ‘is’, and to make new connections and generate new metaphors,

30

in a

31

continuing disclosure of understanding.

Gerald Bruns has shown that we only understand something when it is open to questioning. We cannot understand what is taken as settled and fixed. To be understood it must be restored to the questioning that gives it its sense.

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This is the function of the ‘is not’ of metaphor; it opens up

questioning, or the possibility of questioning. Since all propositional language is inherently metaphorical, it is likewise inherently and necessarily ambiguous. This ambiguity enables an interrogative flow. Lacking ambiguity, language would come to a stand and assume a fixed state. If a statement were to be exclusively affirmative, it would preclude further questioning because it would be the definitive answer to whatever question was asked. In such a case there is no need for further questioning. In the hermeneutical circle, metaphor-structure in its affirmative aspect enables the forward anticipation of wholeness (‘these parts are such and such a whole’), but without a simultaneous negation of the affirmation the circle would stop turning. The projected whole would congeal in stasis. The ‘is not’ of the metaphor dissolves certitude and enables an instant and continuing revision of the ‘is’. Without the ‘is not’ the ‘is’ projected in the hermeneutical circle would not be expedient and temporary, and thus open to constant modification or rejection, but would set into certainty. In summary, the simultaneity of affirmation and negation in metaphor-structure constitutes its potential for disclosure; it facilitates an opening out from the known of affirmation into the unknown of negation. Every metaphor is thus an invitation to the imagination to venture into 33

unfamiliar realms, realms of new metaphors and new juxtapositions.

The coincidence of affirmation and negation in metaphor is directly paralleled in the Hindu and Buddhist concept of non-duality (advaita), which posits that the world of appearances and Reality are ‘two, yet not two’ (Jap. 34

nifuni). This theme is perennial in Indian thought. It was a familiar and integral part of the intellectual ethos of the designers and users of the Hindu and Buddhist monuments. Hindu and Buddhist thought and the hermeneutical philosophy of metaphor share the notion of a coincidence of affirmation and negation. This concurrence offers us a way of demythologising the theme of non-dual identification that is characteristic of the Hindu and Buddhist myths. It also offers a way of avoiding the difficulties and contradictions implicit in objectivist interpretations based on concepts of representation. When the Khmer inscriptions at Angkor, for example, say that the temple is the cosmos they do not intend to convey that the temple represents the cosmos. They posit identity, not representation. Representation implies a separation of the object (in this example, the temple) and what it re-presents 190

Myth, mandala and metaphor

(the cosmos). This distances the symbol and its referent or, in terms of structuralist terminology, distinguishes the signifier and the signified. In this understanding the temple is a symbol that stands for, and stands apart from, the cosmos. By contrast, doctrines of metaphoricity and advaita both lead beyond notions of representation by collapsing the separation of symbols and referent, of signifier and signified. In these views the Hindu temple or the Buddhist stupa does not represent but is the cosmos. The building and the cosmos are somehow fused in identity, and yet remain distinct. This is incomprehensible and meaningless in any objectivist view of representation based on a strict logic of correspondence, but is not senseless when understood in terms of metaphor, in which affirmation implies negation. Non-duality inheres in every metaphorical assertion, and every assertion is metaphorical. ‘Man is a wolf’ does not say that man signifies, represents or symbolises a wolf; it says that man is a wolf … and yet is not a wolf. The ‘is not’ is the key to understanding the dynamics of metaphorstructure; it is also the key to understanding the rules at play in the symbolism of Asian architecture. Metaphor is an assertion of simultaneous identity and difference, unintelligible by the criteria of strict logic or in terms of representation, but not to the modes of understanding that operate in our everyday encounter with language and with the things of the lived-world. In summary, to take myth as a metaphor in the sense of a disclosive way of ‘seeing as’ removes it from the objectivist domain of affirmations which are true or false according to their correspondence with empirically observed physical facts and relocates it in the realm of a non-logical revealing of reality. The validity of the metaphor depends not on its correspondence to some empirically verifiable state of affairs, but on its enabling appropriateness in an experiential context. The metaphor serves not to affirm or deny truth, but to open up previously undisclosed realities. This allows for the possibility of multivalence and polysemy and the co-existing validity of logically contradictory affirmations. Two contradictory statements may both be valid when judged as enabling or disabling metaphors that serve to disclose new understandings rather than as propositions that are true or false according to their correspondence to observed ‘facts’. This is to recognise that just as the meaning of metaphor is dependent on context, so likewise the validity of myth is occasional and contextual.

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In the light of the philosophy of metaphor, science has no superior claim to disclosive potency. Scientific theories, like myths, are metaphors, enabling in some circumstances, disabling in others.

36

As with myth, the

criterion of their validity is not their truth or falsity but their enabling efficacy in opening up new possibilities of thought and action within a particular context of praxis. Cassirer’s contradistinction of scientific and mythopoeic 191

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modes of thought does not, therefore, necessarily imply a hierarchy of opposites; they can be seen, by contrast, as two coexisting metaphorstructures, each disclosive of a different aspect of reality, and each aiding 37

understanding in appropriate contexts.

This is to reject the idea that myth is in unequal competition with science to explain the workings of the physical world. On the contrary, as argued above, myth does not attempt to give an empirical account of physical phenomena but refers to the ontological status of humans, to their existence in the lived-world. It is futile to search for the logic of myth, as if it were a species of science: there is no logic to myth because it functions with reference to humanity’s existential encounter with the world and there is no logical connection between humanity’s existence and fundamental reality. Again, the notion that myth is metaphor displaces the idea that it is allegory. If it were allegory it could be translated into clear, unequivocal language, but as Ricoeur points out, myth cannot be translated into logical terms as if from an encrypted language into a language of logical clarity, since it functions to reveal not logical, but ontological realities. It is irreducible to the categories and 38

formulae of logic.

Myth, metaphor and bodily experience In the preceding we have argued, first, following Kockelmans, that myths bond humans with their life-world, and second, that they are able to perform this function because they act in the manner of metaphors, remembering that metaphor, as understood here, has not a merely grammatical or verbal reference, but signifies a pervasive cognitive structure whereby patterns in 39

one domain of experience are projected into a different domain. A third step in this development is now proposed, namely, that it is bodily experience that enables myths and metaphors to establish a bond with the life-world. This third step provides a means whereby the myths and the architecture associated with them are directly bonded with our bodily experience of the lived-world. The development of this argument requires the reassessment of a deep-seated prejudice (in the Gadamerian sense of the term) that regards the body and the mind as dichotomous. Historically, the Western philosophical and religious traditions privileged the mind at the expense of the body, which was thought of as standing in the way of rational thought and spiritual experience.

40

Reflecting this bias, some earlier Western interpretations of

Hinduism and Buddhism over-emphasised their ascetic aspects, neglecting the importance both traditions place on bodily involvement in every aspect of practice. In Hinduism all rituals and meditational practices are bodily-based. 192

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Every form of meditation involves the body in gestures, âsanas, posture, breathing, and so on; rituals are a bodily reenactment of the myths; hatha-yoga is a bodily-based marga; râja-yoga aims to activate the energies held in the

cakras of the body; the structure of the body is identified with that of the cosmos;

41

and so on. Buddhism likewise does not see the body as ancillary

or obstructive to the Way, but as playing an indispensable role in its practices. The Vajrayâna, in particular, emphasises the interpenetration and mutual dependence of the mind, speech and the body

42

and teaches that Buddha-

43

hood is attained in the body (sokushin-jôbutsu).

The Hindu and Buddhist temples and stupas are not monuments to a Buddhist Awakening or a Hindu Liberation achieved in the mind alone. In one of its connotations, the Hindu temple is simultaneously the Body of the God, the Body of the Cosmos and the body of man, just as the Buddhist stupa, in one reading, is the Buddha-Body. The rituals of laying out the temple and the stupa involve an inscription of the Cosmic Body into the mandala from which 44

the plan and the three-dimensional forms of the architecture derive. The temple is not merely a metaphor for a mental attainment of Awakening or

moksha, but is also, and basically, an embodiment. The Western propensity to prioritise the mind over the body and to privilege the conceptual over the experiential has obscured the connections of myth to the body. It has veiled the notion that myth, in one of its aspects, is a verbalisation of bodily experience, that ritual is the bodily acting out of verbal narrative, and that the building that incorporates myth is a metaphor for somatic experience. Recent theorists in linguistics and cognitive science challenge the hierarchical privileging of the mental over the somatic. They argue that our ability to make sense of language and the world into which we are thrown is not primarily dependent on the establishment of correspondences by way of logical rules but rather on the functioning of imagination in projecting metaphor-structures into both mental images and language structures from the base of image schemata that derive from bodily experience.

45

These

image schemata, which take the form of spatial configurations, connect metaphor-structures to the body and its experience of space, and thence to all modes of understanding. The image schemata referred to here are irreducible patterns of meaning deriving from bodily experience of the manipulation of objects, perceptual interactions and spatial relationships, such as the experience of things as being inside or outside the body; of movement from one place to another; of balance, involving a bodily awareness of verticality; of opposition, involving the bodily experience of left–right, up–down and back–front; of things being contiguous with or separate from the body; of the body having a centre and a periphery; and so on. Image schemata serve to identify and order our 193

Interpretation in architecture

actions, perceptions and conceptions.

46

Made up of a small number of basic

components and connected together by equally basic relationships, they operate at a ‘primordial’ level of generality and abstraction, standing ‘prior’ to 47

mental images, verbal thinking, and our various modes of understanding.

Image schemata ‘translate’ or project into metaphor-structures, whence derive all forms of cognition and understanding. By reference to the image schemata and the metaphor structures that derive from them, thought and reason are shown to have an experiential base, involving bodily perception 48

and movement.

Image schemata are not to be taken as immutable ‘structures’ that underlie and manifest in human actions and cognition. On the contrary, they are inextricably embedded in experiential contexts, and cannot be abstracted from the particular situations in which they manifest so as to be ‘observed’ as objects. They do not form a stable and static underpinning in the world of processual flux; they are not ‘receptacles into which experience is poured’; nor are they in any way like fixed templates that prestructure experience. While they give order to actions and understanding, they are themselves the products of experience and subject to its vagaries. As experience unfolds, it plays back into and transforms image schemata. They are fluid structures

of an activity , changing according to experiential context, not static but dynamic, innately mutable and flexible, constantly changing to fit life-world situations.

49

Neither metaphor-structures nor the bodily-based image schemata from which they arise are ‘subjective’, nor arbitrary and unconstrained. They are meaningful because they are publicly shared structures, depending on shared bodily experiences. It is precisely by way of these structures that the world can be interpreted as coherent, regular, ordered, intelligible. Our ability to make sense of experience depends on being able to understand one domain of experience as another or, in terms of metaphor, to ‘see’ one as 50

the other. This metaphorical exchange (or interaction) for the most part takes place at the pre-conceptual level of image schemata, which operate in both the formation of mental images and language. This has a direct bearing on one way in which myth-based architecture might be interpreted, since the spatial configurations that constitute the image schemata precisely correspond to those delineated in the mandala from which the plan and form of the building are developed. Image schemata are based on bodily awareness, and so likewise are the mandala and the architecture it generates. As pointed out above, the human body is ritually inscribed in the mandala, but so also are the image schemata that enable 51

metaphor to be meaningful. To demonstrate this thesis, in the following a representative sample of image schemata will be described and referred to the spatial configurations of the mandala. 194

Myth, mandala and metaphor

Myth and the mandala The Sanskrit word mandala literally means ‘circle’, but in a technical sense it refers to an oriented square that is laid out around a centre and then reticulated by a grid pattern of smaller squares. The mandala thus formed is the basis for the plans and three-dimensional forms of cities, temples, stupas, palaces and dwellings in many parts of Asia.

52

The mandala is significant in the present context because it relates directly to myth. It is the geometric representation of mythic themes. All aspects of the mandala – its square form, its orientation, its centre, its grid pattern, and so on – have mythic references, which are inscribed into the mandala by means of ritual re-enactments of the myths. Every part of the building – its plan, its orientation, its geometrical and numerical relationships, its massing, spaces, facades and ornament – are developments of elements contained in the mandala, and by the mediation of the mandala, myth 53

becomes an innate presence in every aspect of the built form.

Detailed descriptions of the complex rituals of laying out the 54

mandala are given elsewhere, and it is therefore not necessary to retrace the process here. It is sufficient to specify that the basic configuration obtained by ritual means is a square centred by a vertical axis, and divided by four axes 55

determining the cardinal directions of space.

The principal characteristics of the mandala laid out in this manner, characteristics that will be examined as they relate to developments in postobjectivist linguistics, are as follows: •

a centred space, bounded by a defined periphery (centre–

•

a defined space, bounded from out of an indefinite extension

•

a space oriented to the six directions (up–down, left–right,

•

a space which graphs a path from the periphery to the

periphery); (inside–outside); front–back); centre; •

a chronograph, which maps the cycles of time;

•

a graph of an interacting balance of cosmic forces.

56

The mandala and spatial image schemata The following develops this in greater detail, by showing the connections between several image schemata and the spatial configurations of the mandala. 195

Interpretation in architecture

The in–out schema Typical of image schemata is the in–out (inside–outside) relationship, the schema which gives rise to the recurrent and fundamental metaphorstructures referring to containment and boundaries. As are all image schemata, the in–out structure is a basic bodily experience. The body is a container into which we put food, water, air and so on, and from which wastes, air, blood and suchlike come out. We experience containment and boundedness from moment to moment: we are in space, in rooms, we place things in other things and take them out. Mark Johnson describes a few of the innumerable in–out orientations performed in the first few minutes of an ordinary day: You wake out of a deep sleep and peer out from beneath the covers into your room. You gradually emerge out of your stupor, pull yourself out from under the covers, climb into your robe, stretch out your limbs, and walk in a daze out of the bedroom and into the bathroom. ... [Later, you] get lost in the newspaper, might enter into a 57

conversation, which leads to your speaking out on some topic.

Some of these in–out expressions involve abstract, non-spatial relations (such as entering into a conversation or being absorbed in the newspaper) but all involve some activity of establishing relationships, either among physical entities or among abstract entities or events. The in–out schema is a fundamental and necessary construct in every form of cognition, logic and reasoning. Ordering systems, categorisations and definitions are various ways of locating things and concepts within or outside of bounds. A proposition is a statement of a bounded, defined position; negation is a moving outside that position. By tracing the image schemata, thought and reason are shown to have an experiential base, involving our bodily perception and movement.

58

The in–out schema is a basic constituent of the mandala. The myths associated with the mandala reiterate the theme of bounding; the laying out of the mandala is a demarcation rite, a ritualistic definition of boundaries.

59

Mircea Eliade has collected and collated a mass of evidence from myth to show how ritual demarcation of boundaries is a mimetic cosmogenesis, an ordering of space and time by way of definition, in which an amorphous and chaotic – and therefore unintelligible – expanse is rendered formal, controllable 60

and intelligible by the action of bordering. Eliade demonstrates that this ritual differentiation of a formal world inside the boundaries from an unformed world lying outside is a recurrent and fundamental preoccupation of homo religiosus. Snodgrass’s own studies have related these themes more specifically to the 61

myth and ritual of the mandala. 196

Myth, mandala and metaphor

The periphery of the square separates a formal area, a space with form, from an amorphous surrounding; it marks out a defined, and therefore knowable, space, from an indefinite and inconceivable extension; it specifies a relevant area, a field of ritual operation, from an irrelevant expanse.

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The in–out schema is a primary reference of the mandala. The centre–periphery schema The in–out schema closely relates to the centre–periphery schema, ubiquitous in both the perceptual and experiential worlds. Our bodies are centres from which we perceive our world by way of the senses. We perceive things in perceptual space as nearer or further and as figure or background, and extrapolate to the conceptual world, in which some things, events or persons stand out, ‘loom larger’ and are central to our concerns, while others have a more peripheral or less conspicuous importance. In this way we move by way of metaphor to abstract interpretations of the centre–periphery schema. It organises our encounter with the world in all its perceptual, social, economic, political, religious and philosophical aspects.

63

The centre–periphery schema is itself central to the myths and rituals associated with the mandala. The mythic meaning of the centre has been exhaustively analysed by Eliade, Kramrisch, Guénon, Coomaraswamy and many others.

64

The mandala is a symbol of a cosmogony, graphing the

expansion or evolution of world-space into the six directions from a central 65

point of Unity.

This has a personal as well as cosmic reference: the mandala

also plots the ‘radiation’ of space from the body and of the body from the centre of consciousness. The centre–periphery schema embodied in the mandala merges the space of the cosmos and bodily-experienced space. The mandala also charts a journey of excursion and return, an expansion from the centre to the periphery, and a contraction from the periphery to the centre, an alternating centrifugal and centripetal movement which relates to such rhythms as the exhalation and inhalation of the breath and the systole and diastole of the heart’s action. This has a temporal as well as spatial reference: it relates to the coming and going of the heavenly bodies, the rhythms of the universe, the passage of the sun, birth and death. The cosmic rhythms correlate with the dynamics of the body. The from–to schema Excursion and return is also a manifestation of the from–to or path schema, deriving from the bodily experience of moving from one place to another. This schema involves three elements: a starting point, a finishing point and the path or vector that joins them. This translates into such metaphor-structures as 197

Interpretation in architecture

going or coming from one place to another, receiving and sending letters, throwing a ball, projecting an outcome, the conduit metaphor of communi66

cation, and so on.

As in the case of the in–out schema, the path schema is directly related to logic and reasoning. Having a point of view is to have a position, to be located; thence we follow a path of reasoning to the solution of a problem. Hindu and Buddhist myths tell us that the mandala maps the Path 67

or Way (marga) from illusion to reality, from entanglement to freedom. To trace the path from the periphery to the centre of the mandala is a return to unity, a progress to reintegration. In its Buddhist versions the mandala is the Way, a designation of the Buddhist Dharma. The balance schema Balance is probably the single most important factor in our sense of integration with the world; it is a basic necessity for our bodily functioning; and it is the means whereby we orient ourselves within our environment. Lacking a sense of balance the world would be chaotically vertiginous and we would not be able to orient ourselves or stand upright. Balance is understood by way of an immediate bodily experience. It is learned, not by any mental or cognitive act, but in and by the body. It is something we learn by doing, as when the baby takes its first steps. Balance is what Polanyi refers to as ‘tacit knowledge’, a preconceptual bodily activity 68

that cannot be taught by rules.

The sense of balance is kinaesthetic, that is, derivative from the sense of movement. According to transactional psychologists, kinaesthesia is not a muscle sense, but rather an orchestrated input from the joints of the skeletal frame, an input which specifies a set of directions and distances relative to the spine, the head and the vertical, the direction of gravity. It functions by way of ‘messages’ sent by sensors located within the skeletal joints and ‘monitored’ by the vestibular apparatus located within the inner 69

ear. This apparatus consists in essence of three semicircular canals, the planes of which are arranged at right angles to each other, like the three planes that meet in the corner of a room. The three canals thus delineate the arms of a three-dimensional cross, that is, a vertical axis and two axes at right angles on the horizontal plane. These three axes correspond to the coordinates of space – up–down, right–left, front–back – and thereby to the primary coordinates of space and to the fundamental structure of the mandala. The vestibular apparatus gives us our senses of motion and balance, by reference to the positions of the joints of the body in relation to a vertical axis and the primary coordinates of space. Our movements are organised in relation to an internal three-dimensional cross. The sense of balance is a sense of skeletal space, an awareness of the disposition of the 198

Myth, mandala and metaphor

parts of the body relative to the vertebral–vertical axis of the body (the cephalocaudal axis) and the two horizontal axes (the dorso–ventral and the right–left axes). Every one of our senses ‘makes sense’ by way of reference to the six-armed cross that is innate within our bodies. Without this sense we could not find our way around in the world; it enables us to differentiate up–down, right–left and front–back, and thereby to organise the world of space so that we can orient our movements and keep our balance. This bodily awareness forms an image schema that plays into metaphor-structures in both language and mental images, establishing a close and indissoluble connection between our bodies and our thinking and reasoning. The balance schema structures innumerable expressions in 70

language relating to such diverse phenomena as perception (‘visual balance’),

psychological states (‘he’s unbalanced’), health (‘he’s not getting enough exercise’), legal relationships (‘scales of justice’), government (‘the balance of 71

powers’), argument (‘weighing up the pros and cons’), aesthetics (‘symmetry 72

and proportion’), sociology (‘egalitarian society’), mathematics (x = y); emotion (‘even tempered’) and even the concept of metaphor itself (‘this is – i.e., equals 73

– that’); and so on.

In one of its primary references the mandala is a representation of the balance schema. It represents a balance of cosmic forces as they emanate from and relate to a vertical axis that marks the locus of the perfect equilibrium of polar opposites. The centre [of the mandala] is the place where all contraries are unified and all oppositions are resolved. The coming into existence of the worlds is the genesis of oppositions, the creation of a cosmic dialectic of contrasts and irreconcilables. The cross with arms expanding from a common point of origin in the contrary directions – north versus south, east versus west, and the nadir opposed to the zenith – is the archetypal formulation of this deployment of contraries. It subsumes the cosmic interplay of antipodean counteractions and interactions, the polarity of contradictory energies. The central axis is the place of the nativity of oppositions; it is also the place of their reconciliation, of their 74

union in a coincidentia oppositorum.

The mandala is simultaneously a graph of the balance of opposites in the cosmos and in the human body.

75

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The mandala and image schemata All other image schemata, such as verticality (up–down), opposition (left–right and front–back), cycles, links, etc., can be related to the mandala in a similar manner. It is no mere figure of speech, in the pejorative or reductive sense, to say that the mandala encapsulates the relationship between the being and the total lived-world in its two parameters of space and time. The mandala bonds image schemata and thence human cognition, experience and understanding, to the world-at-large. It reconstructs the world as the bonded, and therefore proper, dwelling place of humankind. In an interpretation of the mandala which links it to contemporary concerns, it is seen as an encapsulation of the manner in which the being bonds with the lived-world by way of sensation, perception, language, mental images and all other modes of understanding. It ties all these to the bodily experience of space and time. The myths and rituals associated with the mandala are various celebrations of the bodily-based image schemata. The myth and ritual of the mandala are potently image schematic. Mythic and ritualistic themes such as the demarcation of an ordered area from out of disruption and disorder, the ordering of space by orientation, the restoration of the articulated world to its primordial unity, the stabilising of the world by setting up a vertical axis, the opening up of a pathway from here to the other world,

76

and the marriage of space and time can, in one interpretation, be

understood as various expressions of bodily-based image schemata. By the mediation of the mandala and the myths that are ritually incorporated into it, the spatial configurations of mandala-generated buildings are, among other things, seen to be celebrations of the bodily-based image schemata that give rise to metaphor. This is not to suggest, in a gesture of heavy-handed reductionism, that the mandala and its associated myths and rituals are nothing but expressions of experiential image schemata. The meanings of the mandala are multi-layered, highly complex and potentially disclosive of an indefinite number 77

of interpretations. To link the mandala with image schemata is not intended to reduce but to add to its earlier understandings so as to give it a relevance to contemporary concerns.

Architecture as a cognitive structure Every built form incorporates the image schemata. The geometry of every building implicitly or explicitly develops from a centre and relates to the six directions of space (verticality, front–back, left–right); each has a bounding periphery (in–out, centre–periphery); incorporates pathways in its circulation 200

Myth, mandala and metaphor

patterns (from–to); and embodies cycles (natural and artificial light, heating and cooling, insulation and ventilation, and so on, are recognitions of the diurnal and annual cycles of the sun). Balance inheres in every aspect of a building’s construction, structure and visual appearance. Every built form is a system of connecting links. Architecture, in this context, is the application of a number of spatial and temporal metaphors projected from bodily-based experiences. Image schemata not only inhere within the building, but operate in every experience of architecture by way of a reciprocal metaphorical transfer of the cross of the directions inhering in our bodies and the cross inhering within the geometry of the building. There is a fusion of our innate image schemata and the fundamental configurations of the building. The spatiality and temporality of built forms are inherently and fundamentally related to our bodily experience of space and time. If, however, every built form in some way incorporates the basic image schemata, why single out those generated by the mandala for special consideration? The answer to this is that the latter claim special attention because, by the mediation of the mandala, they are associated with myths, which give explicit expression to the significance of the spatial configurations that are only implicit in the geometry of the generality of buildings. The mandala geometrises myth; every building incorporates a geometric ordering, but only when explicitly tied to myth does geometry take on a disclosive function and bond humans and their life-world. By the same token, not every reticulated square is a mandala in the technical sense of an image of the cosmos in the manner of its genesis; it only becomes a mandala in this specialist kenning when laid out by ritual means that re-enact the cosmogenetic myths of spatial deployment from a centre into the directions and thereby giving it specific mythic meaning. So similarly, the spatial configurations of the image schemata that foster metaphor-structure and thereby language and rationality, inhere within every building that has ever been constructed. It does not follow, however, that they are enveloped by a geometry that is seen to mirror the spatial image schemata that structure metaphor and thence every form of language. The meanings implicit in the spatial organisation of the mandala are given explicit formulation in myth. This disclosure allows an analogous disclosure of the meanings implicit in the organisation of built forms generally. In this sense the mandala is a master metaphor for all architecture. Taken alone, the observation that architecture relates to the body is a banal axiom; every designer refers designs back to the body, fitting them to bodily sizes, needs and movements. However, the mandala, when seen as delineating spatial relationships that correspond to myths on the one hand and to image schemata on the other, reveals other, more profound associations. The relationship of body and building is not confined simply to matters of 201

Interpretation in architecture

comfort, scale or functional efficiency – the matching of one set of objective data to another – but involves the deepest aspects of being-in-the-world. The fundamental spatial and temporal components of built form are closely and inseparably connected to structures of language, cognition, understanding; they have to do with the way we interpret, make sense of, cope with the world into which we are thrown. They are entwined with the way in which we bond with our existential context.

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Chapter 11

Translating tradition

Figure captions (clockwise from top left) 1

Stone lanterns, Nara, Japan

2 Toyo Ito’s Tower of the Winds, Tokyo, 1993 3

Kinkakuji temple, Kyoto, Japan

4

Shrine complex, Ise, Japan

5

Nikko, Japan

Chapter 11

Translating tradition

The traditions of the mandala bring architecture into sharp relief as interpretation. What of contemporary architecture? The modern movement in architecture eschewed the past. It looked to modern technology for focus and inspiration, and put its trust in a utopian future determined by technological progress. The ‘post-moderns’, in reaction, reaffirmed the relevance of the past, sought to preserve some measure of historical continuity, and tended to be less credulous concerning the inevitability of technological advance to a perfect world. For the most part, contemporary Japanese architects follow the worldwide post-modernist trend in being more conciliatory towards the past and more critical in their attitude towards notions of technological utopianism. Some of them, however, give a distinctively Japanese twist to this general tendency. A number of Japanese architects do not reject the modern movement because of its particular notions concerning architecture, but because of its associations with Western forms of rationality and the technological applications of that rationality. They do not turn to the Japanese tradition to evoke a nostalgic sense of the familiar, to indulge in irony or to reinforce a sense of national identity, but as an alternative and counter to Western modes of logic. The architect Kisho Kurokawa argues for this rejection of Western 1

rationality in favour of traditional ways of thinking. In his writings he describes the strategies he employs in his architectural works for expressing such Buddhist notions as non-duality (funi ), emptiness (kû) and ephemerality (mujô). He dissolves boundaries, merges inside and outside, emphasises intermediary zones and ambiguous spaces, fuses public and private areas, 205

Interpretation in architecture

and uses other such means to create a sense of the ambiguous and the amorphous and to effect what he calls a ‘symbiosis’, a non-dual merging of 2

spaces and times. He regards these strategies not merely as devices for achieving aesthetic ends, but primarily as a counter to the rigid demarcation of categories and the either/or dichotomies of Western thinking, which he blames for the decline of Japanese cities to a state of anti-human chaos, for the present sterility of architecture, and for the excesses of a consumptiondriven and increasingly rootless society. He rejects utopian notions of technological progress. Kurokawa is by no means alone in his thinking. The younger 3

generation of Japanese architects (the ‘New Wave’) similarly deplore the deterioration of architecture, the chaos of the urban environment and the 4

waning of Japanese culture. They share Kurokawa’s skepticism towards Western modes of thinking and search for architectural ways to revive and preserve the Buddhist tradition as an alternative to Western rationalism. There is nothing distinctively Japanese in deploring many aspects of modernity, in noting the consequences of an excessively rigid application of rationality, or in turning back to the past for a sense of cultural identity. Many post-modernist thinkers in the West share these tendencies. What differentiates the attitude of the Japanese from other post-modernist architects is the means they adopt to rehabilitate their tradition. Whereas, on the one hand, they declare a rejection of Western rationality, on the other hand they do not abandon technology, but use it in its purest and least diluted forms. They make no effort to revive handcraft or the materials and techniques of earlier times. Quite on the contrary, Kurokawa and the New Wave are masters of the most sophisticated and advanced technology. Nor do they use technology, as do some other post-modernist architects, to reproduce the forms of the architecture of the past. Their aim is not to quote the styles of previous periods. It is not to reproduce the visible tradition or endorse stylistic revivalism, but to preserve the unseen tradition, the spiritual 5

heritage of Japan.

Kurokawa and the New Wave aim not to quote the tradition but to translate it into the language of technology. They use technology to evoke a sense of the passing of the seasons, the ceaseless flow of all phenomena, the subtle sadness that tinges beauty, the silence that lies beyond sounds, and in this way emulate the traditional arts of Japan, which aimed to evoke intimations of the impermanence of all things, their suchness, their emptiness and the non-duality of forms and emptiness. To this purpose the New Wave architects use metal and glass surfaces to mirror natural changes in the light, sky and weather; they design courts to reflect the play of the sun, cloud shadows and the rain, and thus draw attention to natural processes even in 6

the midst of the city; they hang metal screens to create an ‘anemorphic’ 206

Translating tradition

architecture, its forms changing and resonating with the breezes, to evoke a sense of subtle transformation and immateriality; they use technological means to manipulate planes and spaces and to dislocate geometries so as to give a sense of implied space, to express ‘fluctuations’ (yuragi ) and to create architectural forms redolent of nature and to evoke images of a ‘primal 7

landscape’ deemed to reside in the collective memory of the Japanese.

In all of this they avoid the use of the materials, techniques or forms of traditional architecture, but employ hi-tech means that have no connection with those of earlier times. The architectural forms they produce are not calculated to evoke memories of past styles. Although their architecture draws upon the vocabulary and syntax of the traditional arts – the use of understatement and the unspoken, the evocation of ‘betweenness’ (ma), the opening up of empty space (Chapter 12), and so on – these are conveyed by strictly technological means which are divorced from the arts of former days. There is, obviously, a basic contradiction here. On the one hand the Japanese architects express an antagonism towards Western rationality and its manifestations in modern Japanese life, but on the other hand their buildings are state-of-the-art examples of the use of advanced technology, a technology that has resulted from and expresses the Western rationality they seek to reject. Is this acceptance of the uses of technology and the simultaneous rejection of its rational base a case of having one’s cake and eating it? Does it evidence either hypocrisy or unthinking naivety? Or does it, perhaps, stem from some darker, xenophobic source? Is it simply a new expression of ‘Japanese Spirit, Western Technology’ (wakon yôsei ), the anti-foreign slogan of those in the nineteenth century who aimed to protect Japanese culture 8

from the incursions of the Western powers? Is it, perhaps, what in Japan is called tenkô, a ‘turn’ or ‘about-face’, which is a mental retreat into the womb of Japanese values (Nippon e no kaiki )? Or is it a manifestation of the nihonjinron belief in the uniqueness and superiority of a Japanese sensibility, the ‘logic’ of which will forever remain inaccessible to outsiders? It would be foolish to deny that these forces may well play a part in the thinking of the Japanese architects we are discussing. Nevertheless, it would be too hasty to dismiss that thinking out of hand on the grounds of irrationality or xenophobia. This chapter will argue that the notions of a simultaneous rejection of Western rationality and acceptance of technology can be supported by arguments drawn on the one hand from the Western philosophers Heidegger and Gadamer, and on the other hand from the Japanese Buddhist tradition. It will also argue that these notions are not of merely parochial interest within the Japanese context, but are relevant to our Western understanding of how we are to cope with technology in this era of its ubiquitous dominance. 207

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The instrumental metaphor of technology Technology is most usually discussed in terms of a metaphor of instrumentality. This supposes that we use technology to produce certain useful results in the same way that we use technological equipment to manipulate and control objects. Technology, in this metaphor, is a means to an end; it is used to control nature, with the aim of producing things for human benefit, consumption or use. Implicit in the metaphor of technology as an instrument is the notion of control, which in turn is based on the concept that humans and technology stand over against each other in the manner of a workman and a tool. The notion of instrumentality thus involves a basic duality, with humanity on one side and technology on the other. Debates concerning technology are usually conducted within the framework of this humanity/technology dichotomy. On the one hand there are those who think that humanity has lost control of technology, that it is destroying rather than enhancing the quality of life, and holds the potential for catastrophe. They point to global warming, ozone holes, nuclear arsenals, pollution, smart bombs, genetic engineering, user-friendly means of mass extermination and other potentially destructive phenomena to support their argument that science and technology are running amok, and have escaped human control in the manner of a machine whose brakes have failed. On the other hand, there are those who are convinced that technology remains under human control. Technology has immeasurably improved our standards of life, and the disasters cited by their opponents are merely the mishaps that are liable to occur in any human activity; but humans, by way of science and technology, can find means of controlling any deleterious effects that may accompany the advance of technology. The dangers posed by technology are problems which science, under human 9

control, can solve.

Heidegger on technology The instrumental metaphor of technology is ‘correct’ as far as it goes but, as does every metaphor, it only reveals a partial aspect of its referent. It conceals as well as reveals. Heidegger proposes a different metaphor. He likens the functioning of technology in the modern world to a cybernetic system, in which information feeds back in a loop to monitor a machine’s own functioning, enabling it to be self-regulating and autonomous. External control is superfluous. Similarly, technology now functions without human control. It 10

is self-regulating, and also self-generating. 208

Translating tradition

This auto-proliferation has proceeded to such an extent that technology has become hegemonic. Humans no longer control technology; technology controls humans. Machines are no longer mere tools, but form part of global systems involving interactions and involvements that are so bewilderingly complex that an overview of their workings is no longer possible. Under the regime of technology, things and humans both are subject to the same mechanisms of quantitative calculation and techno-rationalism that are the hallmarks of technology. Things and people become statistics and objects for use; they are controlled by the same exigencies of efficiency and utility 11

that drive technology.

In the light of these developments it is no longer appropriate to speak of technology in instrumental terms of human control. The metaphor is obsolete. We no longer control, but are controlled by technology; technology no longer belongs to us, but we belong to technology; and we do not stand over against technology, but are part of its structure. The human/technological differentiation deconstructs. For Heidegger, the driving force of techno-rationality is Leibniz’s principle of sufficient reason, the principle that ‘no fact could ever be true or existent, no statement correct, unless there were a sufficient reason why it was 12

thus and not otherwise’. Science seeks the reasons for things so as to exercise a rational control over them. It is based on the premise that the behaviour of phenomena has a cause and is rationally explicable, and that access to reasons and causes allows predictions, and thereby control of the phenomena. This style of thinking, which Heidegger calls ‘calculative thought’ (Chapter 4), imbued with notions of instrumental control, has become allpervasive and hegemonic in the modern world. Many accept it as the only mode of rationality. It only allows those things to come to presence which can be accounted for and thereby ordered, represented, regulated, organised, managed or manufactured for some purpose. Unless a reason can be given for a thought or an action, it is ‘irrational’, unfounded, unsupported and unsupportable. It is without justification and cannot be validated. In the modern world everything is treated in terms of control and is ordered in accordance with the demands of technological rationality. The sole reason for the existence of things is to serve technological needs. The world is set within a framework in which all phenomena are seen as waiting to be accumulated, manipulated and calculated.

13

All things thus become part of a

global store of resources, a ‘standing reserve’ (Bestand ) of raw materials to feed the self-propelling expansion of technology.

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The enframing of thought There is a profound paradox embedded in discussions of technology. To give reasons to support an argument concerning technology is to reinforce the allpervasive hegemony of the technological way of thinking. In order to discuss or criticise notions of technology we are constrained to use the language of technological rationality, structured in accordance with the framework of the principle of sufficient reason. We are trapped within technological modes of reasoning as in an enframing structure (Gestell ). This, for Heidegger, is the essence of technology. The ‘greatest danger’ confronting us, he says, is that techno-rationality, which has come to enframe all things, will become the only way of seeing reality, excluding all modes of thinking which lie outside the framework predetermined by 14

technology.

Heidegger asserts that techno-rationality did not emerge as the result of human action or thought, but is the way Being discloses itself in this epoch. It is an event (Ereignis) of Being. If correct, this leads to a profoundly significant conclusion: we cannot hope to control technology, because its essence lies beyond our willing. If the essence of technology is Being itself, then technology can never be mastered, neither positively nor negatively, through a mere self-dependent human action. Technology, whose essential being is Being itself, can never be overcome by man. This would mean that man would be the lord 15

of Being.

Heidegger leads us into extreme perplexity. The world, it would seem, is now given over to a single mode of thought, techno-rationality, which is the ‘greatest danger’ threatening humanity, but no human agency can alter this state of affairs. Our attempts to control technology simply reinforce the enframing patterns of control that characterise technology itself. This state of affairs is further complicated by the double-bind that Heidegger sets up when he asserts that Leibniz’s principle of sufficient reason itself lacks reason. When we ask for the reason for reason, there is no reply. If all thought and all action ultimately lack reason, and if all our efforts to control technology are futile, then the only response seems to be a passive acceptance of fate. The way ahead seems to lead into nihilism and chaos. Everything is founded on the void.

210

Translating tradition

Letting-be Heidegger calls on us to recognise our own finitude: ‘We are so finite that we are not able by our own decision and will to bring ourselves originally face to face with the Nothing’.

16

If our powers of control and understanding 17

are limited, we must allow the Nothing to disclose itself to us. The way to deal with technology is to leave it alone to reveal itself. This is not a matter of a passive submission, but of learning to ‘listen’ to what Being discloses, and of opening ourselves up to its disclosure. He calls this opening up to Being ‘letting-be’ (Gelassenheit). This is to allow things to disclose themselves to us as they are, without asking what is their reason for existing or to what use they might be put; and this letting-be is not only to apply to things in general but also to technology itself. To let technology be, we are not to ask why it is as it is, but allow it to disclose itself, in its mystery. Letting-be is a non-willing, a renunciation of the will to control things, and instead respecting them for what they are in themselves. Some will interpret letting-be as an injunction to give up and do nothing in the face of the onslaught of technology, allowing it free rein to wreak havoc as it will. But Heidegger is not preaching either a rejection or renunciation of technology. He is not saying we should refuse to deal with it. He says, We are able to use technological objects and yet with suitable use keep ourselves so free of them that we are able to let go of them at any time. We are able to make use of technological objects as they ought to be used. But we are also able simultaneously to let them alone as something which does not concern what is innermost in us and proper to us.

18

Heidegger says that talk about rejecting technology is ‘foolishness’. He specifically denies the suggestion that he advocates ‘some kind of renaissance of presocratic philosophy’, and he asserts that any attempt to turn back the clock would be ‘idle and foolish’.

19

Any turn against the use of technological

equipment would be equally vain. There is no point in attempting to renounce the trappings of technology. As Heidegger says, The equipment, apparatus, and machines of the technological world are for all of us today indispensable, for some to a greater extent, for others to a less extent. It would be foolish to blindly assail the technological world. It would be shortsighted to wish to condemn the technological world as the work of the devil.

20

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Interpretation in architecture

Phronesis as letting-be This advice does not give much comfort to those, such as architects, who must work and act in the world enframed by technology and are compelled on a daily basis and at the most fundamental levels to design with some assurance that what they are doing is not contributing to an eventual cataclysm. What attitude of letting-be can authentically be adopted when one’s everyday design actions are intimately and inextricably meshed with technology and its enframing modes of thinking? Heidegger’s thinking seems to lead to the conclusion that there is no way we can act to control technology. His letting-be is an attitude, an openness to what technology discloses. There is, however, an alternative way of viewing this. It might be argued that Heidegger’s thinking has succumbed to the same enframing that he deplores.

21

It resorts to Aristotle’s contrast

of episteme, the technical knowledge governing how something is to be made, and techne, the making of things according to the dictates of that prior knowledge. In this reading, episteme and techne correspond to what we now designate theory and practice. Heidegger forgets, however, that Aristotle contrasted episteme and techne on the one hand with phronesis and praxis on the other. As first introduced in Chapter 2, phronesis is a ‘practical knowledge’, a tacit understanding of how to act in an unfamiliar situation. It is the ability to act appropriately in the praxis of social interactions. In the Aristotelian sense, praxis is not ‘practice’ as we now understand the term, but is an activity involving the play of judgement. It is the making of ethical decisions by the exercise of phronesis. What is relevant in the present context is, first, that for Aristotle phronesis is a mode of ‘disclosure’ (alethenein) whereby the truth (aletheia) comes forth; and second, that phronesis and praxis are not ways of thinking, but modes of action. In a situation that demands action, the phronimos does not first think out what to do, referring back in the mind to precedents and rules for action, and then apply them, as in the case of the application of epistemic knowledge in techne, but simply acts, applying in unmediated praxis what is tacitly contained, ‘unthought’, in phronesis. Praxis is acting without thinking. As we have explored at length, spontaneous action, action without the prior intervention of thought or the application of paradigmatic rules, is a main theme in Gadamer’s hermeneutics. His analysis of dialogue, play, the production and reception of the artwork, the fusion of horizons, and so on, demonstrate a form of rationality that does not privilege thought over action or theory over practice, but collapses these dichotomies into a ‘thinking-in-action’. This is a form of letting-be that escapes the ‘enframing’ of techno-rationality. In these types of human interaction a truth emerges that is not subject to 212

Translating tradition

utilitarian imperatives of control or to the principle of sufficient reason. Things simply happen; truth simply appears.

Actionless activity Heidegger’s notions of letting-be and those of Gadamer concerning phronesis ring together with the thought of Japanese Mahâyâna.

22

Buddhists will hear

familiar overtones in Heidegger’s letting-be, for Buddhism also speaks of a ‘letting go’, a non-grasping, in which things are not asked their why but simply seen in their Suchness (tathatâ, Jap. shinnyo).

23

Again, Japanese who are

conversant with the traditions of Buddhist thinking will hear resonances in Gadamer’s reading of ‘thoughtless action’ and ‘thinking in action’. We should not imagine that Heidegger is the first thinker to lead us to the furthermost edge of perplexity and to see the looming of the abyss when he demonstrates that reason is without reason. In the second century CE, or thereabouts, Nâgârjuna showed that when we apply the criteria of logic to logic’s own foundations, those foundations crumble.

24

Logic itself,

judged by its own rules, is logically incoherent and inconsistent. No assertion, without exception, can be sustained by reason, including even the assertion 25

that no assertion can be sustained by reason.

Illogic inheres within all logic.

When logic is reflectively applied to itself, it collapses. Reason can give no absolute and certain support for knowledge. Heidegger’s thinking ‘rings together’ with Nâgârjuna’s. The two bodies of thought, separated by nearly two millennia, arrive at similar conclusions. Both follow a path that seems to lead to nihilism. To show the basic emptiness of reason, however, is not necessarily to espouse nihilism. The Mâdhyamika school of Buddhism, teaching Nâgârjuna’s dismantling of reason, has been widely influential wherever Mahâyâna Buddhism has flourished. It is a fundamental influence in every Mahâyâna mode of thinking and practice, and is studied by Buddhist scholars in Japan and elsewhere to this day. Its deep and long-lasting influence, however, has not encouraged nihilism or engendered chaos. Quite on the contrary, the Mâdhyamika launched an enduring and profound culture, one based not on a foundation of certainty, but on a non-foundation of the voidness of all attempts, rational or otherwise, to grasp the nature of reality. Nâgârjuna’s dismantling of logic did not presage the end of thought and culture. Nor did the thinkers who followed after Nâgârjuna reject his demolition of reason as leading to the edge of the abyss, but criticised him for not going far enough. Rather than shrinking back, they took his deconstructive strategies as merely the first step on the Way, the Tao, leading further and further into the Reality of Emptiness.

26

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Interpretation in architecture

How is it possible that a way of thinking that denies reason’s sovereignty could flourish without fostering nihilism or without negating the motives for an active involvement in everyday practicalities? The Buddhist answer to this question also has overtones that ‘ring together’ with Heidegger’s injunction to let things be. Variations on the concept of letting things alone to be what they are themselves pervade the doctrines of every sect of the Mahâyâna. The concept is particularly evident in the Jôdô-shin sect of Japanese Buddhism, which makes it the focus of both its doctrine and ‘practice’.

27

Jôdô-shin

advocates ‘non-doing’ so as to let Buddhahood reveal itself in oneself, kono28

mama, ‘just as one is’, and in all things, sono-mama, ‘just as they are’.

The teachings concerning this non-interfering ‘non-action’ (mui ) are encapsulated in the phrase jinen-hôni. Since the nineteenth century the Japanese term jinen has been used to translate the English word ‘nature’, and has taken on all the ambiguities of that term. Before Western influences changed its meaning, however, it carried connotations of the spontaneous self-revealing of nature.

29

In a famous passage, the Jinenhônishô in his

Mattôshô(ô) (‘Lamp for the Latter Ages’), Shinran, the founding patriarch of the Jôdo-shin school, defines jinen.

30

He says that ji means ‘of itself’, having

nothing to do with the doing and saying of human beings. It is not the result of an intention or self-assertion (hakarai ). It means ‘letting-be’ or ‘letting do’. Nen means ‘to cause to come about’ (shikarashimu), and also signifies things that happen that are not due to our effort. This is called hôni, literally ‘according to the Dharma’, and meaning the spontaneous working of the universal Law. The functioning of jinen is ‘effortless naturalness’ (musa-hôni ), an ‘action of no-action’ or ‘action without an acting subject’. Thinking and acting are 31

not seen as one’s own doing, but as ‘originally un-produced’ (honpushô). When there is a letting go and a letting be, which is a non-grasping, a non-clinging, thoughts and actions emerge of themselves. Shinran develops this exposition to contrast tariki, ‘other power’, the power of the natural revealing itself spontaneously, with jiriki, ‘self power’, the practices in which the practitioner strives to attain results by his or her own efforts and by stratagems of control. Shinran’s thinking has had a widespread and abiding influence on Japanese thinking. A prominent example of this influence is Hajime 32

Tanabe’s philosophy of metanoesis (zangedô), based on Shinran’s teachings.

By ‘metanoesis’ he denotes ‘a transcending of noetics, or in other words, a transcending of metaphysical philosophy based on contemplation or intellectual intuition achieved by reason’.

33

In metanoetics reason is led to

surrender its ‘self-power’ (jiriki ) in deference to an ‘other power’ (tariki ), an ‘effortless naturalness’ (musa-hôni ) that is beyond all oppositions between self and other, and in which thinking and acting are not one’s own doing, but arise naturally. This is ‘action of non-action’ or ‘action without an acting 214

Translating tradition

object’ (musa no sa). The agent is an ‘empty being’ (kû-u), who submits to 34

‘naturalness’ (jinen-hôni ) and allows it to work without interference.

This working of the other power is the basis of an ‘intransitive’ approach to the creative act or creative thought. As is well known, spontaneity plays a major role in the Japanese arts. To take but one example, in sumie, paintings in black ink on paper applied with a pliant brush, the materials themselves allow for no deliberation, erasure or retouching. The brush strokes are indelible and irrevocable. The paper is highly absorbent, and if the brush pauses too long on the surface the paper will tear or the ink will spread to form 35

a blot. The lines must be traced as quickly as possible. The painter does not either direct or follow the movements of the brush, but is at one with them. The mind, body, arm, fingers, brush, ink and the surface of the paper work together in a single undifferentiated wholeness. The artist does not think out where the brush is to go, and then use it as an instrument to effect what has been previously thought. The mind, the body and the brush move together. In Japanese this fusion of mind, body and medium is called ‘no36

mind’ (mushin). This is not simply ‘empty-headedness’ or ‘unconsciousness’. On the contrary, it is a heightened state of consciousness, one in which the artist becomes more fully to be. This greater intensity of consciousness is not, however, an enhancement of any feeling of self-consciousness, because it is dependent precisely on the loss of self in the action that is taking place. It is also known as ‘non-remembering’ or ‘no-memory’ (munen), which is amnesia not in the sense of mere forgetfulness, but of a forgetfulness of one’s own separateness and identity. It is a non-striving and a non-willing. The same considerations apply in many of the other Japanese arts.

37

Zeami, in one of his classic works on the Nô drama, says the highest

attainment of the Nô actor is the ability (nô) to enter the ‘wondrous’ (myô 38

妙). This is a Buddhist technical term, and is wellnigh untranslatable,

39

but

indicates the total non-grasping that translates into a transcendence of artifice or premeditated thought. At this stage of attainment, the actor is no longer concerned with technique or concepts and the acting appears of its own 40

accord.

The Japanese Mingei potter, to take another example, does not first form a precise idea of what the pot will be before s/he commences work, 41

but allows the pot to ‘disclose’ itself in its making. The pot is not pre-thought and then made, but made in the making. For this disclosure, the potter must have a complete oneness with the wheel and the clay that is forming in his or her hands. The potter does not manipulate an object, but becomes one with the materials and the movements involved in its making. Further, the pot is allowed to be and form itself as it wishes even after it has left the hands of the potter. Allowance is made for accidents in the firing, which makes each pot distinctive. 215

Interpretation in architecture

In such activities, letting-be finds its fulfilment not in quiescence or acquiescence but in spontaneous action. ‘Actionless activity’ takes on a new meaning; and ‘no mind’ is seen not to be thoughtlessness or unconsciousness, but acting in the effortless manner that comes with practice. It is not suggested that this spontaneity is simply a matter of allowing things to happen. Spontaneity is achieved as a result of effort. It should go without saying that the ability (nô) to merge with the medium and to be fully absorbed in a process of making is dependent on training. It requires practice, the repetitive performance of five-finger exercises or whatever else is required to develop somatic skill. This is discipline in its original kenning, a ‘learning’ in the body by way of exercise, which is etymologically an untying of the knots, a relaxing of physical restraints. The fingers or body, when 42

trained, automatically distinguish where they should be at any time. Through training, the process of repetition, controlled actions become spontaneous reactions that have been incorporated, that is, brought into the body. If the pianist were first to think where her fingers were to go, she would become fumble-fingered. The skilled player does not think what the body is doing or where the fingers are to go, but simply plays, absorbed in the playing. Neither the body nor the mind gets in the way. The spontaneous artist is one who is sufficiently skilled by training (which is a ‘drawing out’, from Latin trahere) to be able to stand aside, as it were, to allow room or make space for the accidental to happen, to be-fall, which is what ‘accident’ means (from Lat. cadere, ‘to fall’). The Japanese language is better equipped than English and other Latin-derived languages to deal with such ways of thinking and doing. The structure of the Japanese grammar favours intransivity, whereas English gives greater emphasis to transivity. That is to say, as conveyed in Japanese, events ‘emerge’, ‘come out’ or ‘appear’ in a spontaneous disclosure, rather than 43

being directly attached to an agent.

To give but one example, the word dekiru (出来る), given in the dictionaries as ‘to be able’, ‘to be possible’, has de (出)

44

as its first character.

This means ‘to appear from’ or ‘to come out’. It represents a plant growing upward from a hole in the earth (凵). The second character in the compound, ki (来), is ‘to come’. The verb dekiru thus has the connotations of coming out, or appearing, in the manner of a plant growing from the earth, spontaneously, of itself. In Japanese, therefore, the ability to do something does not carry the connotations of being able to act in such a way that a required result will follow, but rather equates a non-action in which things happen of their own accord. Thus the Japanese equivalent for the English phrase ‘I can speak Japanese’ is Nihon dekimasu, ‘Japanese comes out, or appears’. Personal agency is absent. Dekiru also has the meanings of ‘to be done, ready, finished, be made of, be established, be formed, come into being’, and deki (出来), 216

Translating tradition

‘to make’ or ‘workmanship, result’, can also be read as shuttai, ‘occurrence, completion, fulfilment’. As expressed in Japanese, all these activities, which in English are the effect of an agent, are an agent-less appearing. Making is not the action of a maker, but the completion or fulfilment of a coming into existence, of itself. The action of producing something is one in which the maker, the object being made and the process of making lose distinction. Spontaneity, of course, is not the exclusive prerogative of the Japanese. The twentieth century in the West was a time of discovering the spontaneous, in things as divergent as jazz, Pollack’s paint-drippings and Calder’s self-generated sculptural patterns. What is different in the Japanese experience, however, is that over many centuries they have developed a conscious awareness of spontaneity, and have developed subtle and 45

sophisticated aesthetic theories to accommodate its presence.

Letting-be and active non-action Both Gadamer and the Japanese doctrines of spontaneity and ‘no-mind’ show that there are ways of action and production that are not subject to the technorationalist enframing that Heidegger posits as hegemonic in the modern world. Action does not necessarily proceed sequentially from episteme to techne, but might alternatively be thought of as an ‘exploration’, not in the present everyday usage of the term, which has a transitive connotation involving the agency of a subject, but in that of its etymological sense of ex-pluere, ‘to flow from’. In its earlier sense exploration is a spontaneous ‘flowing forth’, a revealing or disclosure that takes place when the agent stands aside (or outside, in an ecstasis) and allows it to do its own thing. Here again etymology uncovers forgotten meaning, since ‘allowance’ comes from two sources, allocare, ‘to place’, and al-laudere, ‘to praise’: to allow something to appear is to give it room and thus locate it, and at the same time to value it, since ‘praise’, relating to ‘appraise’, ‘prize’ and ‘price’, is ‘to value’. Gadamer and the Japanese tradition ‘flesh out’ Heidegger’s philosophy of letting-be. They counter any tendencies to quiescence, acquiescence or nihilistic passivity that some might be tempted to read into Heidegger’s bleak analysis of technology. They indicate that activity and creativity are not necessarily always instrumental or captive to enframing, but that there are modes of doing and thinking that are free and not prefigured by the dictates of techno-rationality. At the level of everyday practicalities and as it relates to ways of coping with technology, letting-be in both the Heideggerian and Buddhist modes means playing our role in the technological world, accepting the benefits of technology and doing our best to minimise its dangers, while 217

Interpretation in architecture

yet retaining a critical skepticism concerning its truth claims. To follow Heidegger’s injunctions to keep ourselves free of technological objects is to apply judgement, and this in itself is to employ a ‘non-rational’ praxis, which is to say non-enframed modes of action. Even if, as Heidegger claims, we cannot ‘control’ technology, nevertheless in our everyday dealings we can act in an uncalculating manner in response to the needs of the occasion. This means working within the framework of technological rationality, seeking causes, predicting outcomes and fixing breakdowns as best one can, but with a full awareness that our actions are circumstantial and occasional responses to circumstantial and occasional situations and have no firm foundation. It is to act as the technological ethos demands, but with a clear recognition that concepts of controlling technology are only valid within limits, that we are not applying universal laws which are permanently and statically embedded in the very nature of things. We are compelled to do our best to prevent and clean up oil spills, to protect endangered species, to contain nuclear expansion and to scrutinise genetic engineering, but this compulsion does not entail an uncritical acceptance of technological rationality. We are not compelled to accept technological rationality as the only way of reacting to technology. As the above-quoted passages from Heidegger show, this incredulity towards the truth claims of technology does not entail the rejection of technology itself, but technology can be used in ways that make due allowance for Gadamer’s free play of judgement on the one hand, and of Japanese spontaneity on the other.

Resisting technical rationality Familiarity with Heidegger’s notion of letting-be, Gadamer’s reminder of the existence of non-technological modes of thought and action, and the ‘echoes’ of these philosophies in the Japanese doctrines of ‘actionless activity’ and ‘naturalness’ (jinen) puts us in a better position to understand what Kurokawa and the New Wave are about when they unequivocally employ technology to translate their tradition into a form that is relevant to the age of technology. We can now better understand what Kurokawa means when he says that he will 46

push technology so far that it reveals its human face.

Such statements come

from within a tradition of non-dual thinking; he is reaffirming the insight that all dichotomies, including that which separates humanity and technology, are only one way of seeing reality. Equally true is the non-dual view that sees them in their fusion. He is reaffirming the Buddhist doctrine that all things – humans, machines, technological rationality – are real but at the same time empty. Their reality demands our involvement but, being empty, they cannot be grasped. 218

Translating tradition

Letting-be, in this context, is to follow a middle way between active involvement and a non-grasping abstention, a way between action and non-action. He is reaffirming that all things that technology brings us – the things of ugliness and danger and the things of beauty and joy – are neither to be shunned or welcomed, but simply dealt with as they arise and as the occasion demands. Most commentators, I imagine, will see the architecture of Kurokawa and the New Wave as an exercise in aesthetics, to be placed alongside the works of those post-modern architects in other parts of the world who appropriate the past, using the tradition as a standing reserve (Bestand ) of forms and ideas to be manipulated in the service of a new movement. On the other hand, if Japanese New Wave architecture is an authentic translation of the Buddhist tradition, it will not be concerned with aesthetics for its own sake. Even Zen, which is often associated with an appreciation of simple things and the beauties of nature, is not concerned with beauty as such, but primarily, as in Buddhism generally, with suffering, mortality, ignorance and the grotesque. Buddhism only points to beautiful things if they act as expedient means conducive to a seeing of all things, whether monstrous or beautiful, benign or threatening, as they are in themselves and as they are in their emptiness. It lets all things be, both pleasant and repulsive, and allows them to lie forth. This applies as much to hydrogen bombs or nuclear plants as to cherry blossoms and tea bowls. Again, if this architecture is a genuine translation, its acceptance of technology will have little in common with the adulation of science and hope in a technological utopia that characterised the modern movement. It will, by contrast, be fully aware not only of the dangers posed by some aspects of technology, but also of the ‘greatest danger’, that posed by the possibility of totalitarian sovereignty being invested in the essence of technology, its rationality. Even while resisting a turning back to the craft traditions, it will, therefore, still recognise the greatest challenge they pose for techno-rationality, spontaneous rather than contrived and controlled action. The practice of architecture today, like all else, is enframed within the structuring of technological rationality. Architects seem to be faced with a choice between an uncritical acceptance of technology, taking for granted that it inevitably leads to a better world; or else a partial or total rejection of technology, involving a turning back from the present to the past. Either way they are caught in a dualistic way of thinking, trapped in the oppositions that inhere within the logic of technological rationality. Whatever their choice, it strengthens the entanglements of that rationality. The thinking of Kurokawa and the New Wave is significant as pointing towards a middle way that slips between these oppositions, and thus leads out of the enframing. Following this path could possibly lead to a realm where technology, in translating tradition, is itself transformed. 219

Chapter 12

Thinking through the gap

Figure captions (clockwise from top left) 1

Scottish Parliament, Edinburgh. Architects: Enric Miralles and Benedetta Tagliabue (EMBT) and RMJM

2

Gateshead Millennium Bridge by Wilkinson Eyre Architects and Gifford and Partners Engineers. View from BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, by Ellis Williams Architects

3

Porto, Portugal

4

Newcastle train station, UK

5

Doorway in Salamanca, Spain

6

Japanese character ma

Chapter 12

Thinking through the gap

In Japanese, ‘design’ is madori (間取り), ‘grasping space’. The following attempts to do just that, to grasp what ‘space’ means when seen through the prism of another language. The exegesis of the term and its cognates employs a twofold ‘methodology’: it locates them in the context of writings on art and architecture; and uses what might be called ‘an etymological archaeology’, digging beneath the surface of the pictographic content of the Chinese characters (kanji ) that ‘represent’ the terms. These two exegetical strategies reveal nuances of meaning missing in the one-for-one equivalences given in dictionaries, and uncover ways of seeing and thinking architectural space that differ fundamentally from those structured by the English language.

Ma as space–time interval The first Chinese character in the compound mado is ma (間). It depicts 1

the sun, hi (日), between the leaves of a two-leaved gate, mon (門). The etymological dictionaries say that the character represents the light of the sun shining though the gap in the gate. The significance of the sun will be explained in what follows, but what is important to grasp at this point is that ma is a contained space, like the space that forms a gap between the partially opened leaves of a double gate. Ma is ‘space’, but not in the sense of a boundless extent in which objects are located. It is, rather, the space between two objects, and therefore the dictionaries give it not only as ‘space’ but also as ‘interval’, ‘between’ and ‘among’. A neologism, ‘betweenness’, conveys the meaning of the word better than does ‘space’. 223

Interpretation in architecture

With this sense of ‘between-space’ ma can refer to the space between two walls, and is thus used to designate the rooms or spaces of a building. For example, in the house the i-ma, literally the ‘space of being’, is what we would call the ‘living room’, the kyaku-ma (‘visitors’ space’), is the room for receiving visitors, the hiroma (‘wide space’) is the entrance space, and so on.

2

An alternative reading of the character ma (間) is ken, which is a unit of measure (approximately two metres), used for measuring out the internal 3

dimensions of spaces in the building. Rather than indicating dimensions in general, the ken is used exclusively to measure inner spaces between walls and other structural components in order to standardise floor areas to accommodate tatami mats, which are prefabricated in particular sizes. The measuring out of the house, whether in the design or construction stages, proceeds from inside out, from contained to containing, by reference to the intervals between forms rather than to the forms themselves. Apart from specifying a measure of length, ken also has the more general meaning, particularly in the case of temple architecture, of the intervals between columns or beams forming the bays of a building. The bay-intervals are measures of ma; they measure out the building by means of gaps, or measures of betweenness. Ma, however, is not only a spatial betweenness. It also carries temporal connotations. It is a stop or pause in a sequence of actions or events, and with this meaning it is used to designate an aesthetic device that plays a vital role in the Japanese temporal arts, the pause that interrupts the flow of narrative, sound or action. In music it is the rest that temporarily stops the melody in order to evoke the power of silence; in the Kabuki, it is the ‘pose’ (mie) that freezes action for dramatic effect; it is the core of an actor’s ‘timing’ or the comedian’s delay before delivering the punch-line. An oft-cited example of the functioning of ma is the momentary stopping of the action in 4

a Nô drama. The Nô is called ‘the art of ma’ and pregnant pause-poses are the moments in which the drama comes together, and comes through to the awareness of the viewer, in the manner of light filtering through a gap. These are the illuminating moments of the play, and the talent (nô) of the actor is judged by his/her ability to enliven the ma, the pause.

Ma and society Ma has other nuances, bought out in compounds such as ningen [人間] meaning ‘human, humanity’ (in which gen is another reading of ma), combining the characters for ‘man’ or ‘human’ (hito) and ‘betweenness, among’ (ma). The implication conveyed by the compound is that to be human is to be among 224

Thinking through the gap

other people, in a space–time relationship of betweenness with others, in a 5

space in which human interrelationships are acted out in time. Seken [世間], ‘society’, literally ‘ma of the world’, indicates the in-between space–time of the world in which humans interact. Ma is the space of human events; space is the site in which human situations are enacted.

Ma and architecture The Japanese architect Arata Isozaki, in an exhibition on ma he held at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York in 1979, showed with numerous examples how the notion of ma, betweenness, is expressed in Japanese architecture. In the catalogue to the show, he summarises the architectural meanings of ma, saying, While in the West the space–time concept gave rise to absolutely fixed images of an homogenous and infinite continuum, as presented in Descartes, in Japan space and time were never fully separated but were conceived as correlative and omnipresent. […] Space could not be perceived independently of the element of time [and] time was not abstracted as a regulated, homogenous flow, but rather was believed to exist only in relation to movements of space. […] Thus space was conceived as identical with the events of phenomena occurring in it; that is, space was recognized only in its relation to time-flow.

6

Ma thus brings together and fuses space and time. Designing, ‘grasping the ma’ (madori ), is not only a matter of grasping space, or spaces, but also of grasping the time that goes together with space. It is a grasping of space–time, time as it unfolds in space and space as it is enclosed in time. A number of studies in the Western literature have examined in 7

considerable detail how ma finds expression in architecture. They show how ma is expressed in the formal and aesthetic aspects of architecture in such things as ‘openings, bridging spaces, form defining space rather than space serving form, simplicity, asymmetry, flowing-changing forms, and so forth’.

8

Studies have also shown how these notions have influenced a number of 9

Australian architects. The concern here, however, is not with the way in which ma translates into formal and aesthetic expressions, but with drawing out meanings that call into question some of our presuppositions regarding architecture, and especially the notion of architecture that is conveyed by expressions such as ‘forms in space’ or ‘forms in light’.

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Interpretation in architecture

The do of madori It is apparent from the preceding that design as madori, ‘ma-grasping’, carries meanings that have little to do with our notions of design as a manipulation of objects in space. The gap between the two interpretations widens when the second character in the compound madori is examined. The character do (取), ‘to grasp’, is made up of the characters for ‘hand’ (又) holding an ‘ear’ (耳), which doesn’t seem to make much sense until it is pointed out that ‘ear’ equates to the handle of a vessel or container. The character do shows the hands holding a vessel by its handles. The full significance of this as it relates to design and architecture appears when it is realised that in the Japanese kenning the notion of a container or vessel is not as ours. The Japanese understanding of what a ‘vessel’ or ‘container’ is involves not what physically encloses space, but the enclosed space itself, which is where what is to be carried is to dwell. The empty space is what enables the vessel to be a vessel (though the vessel, 10

of course, is surrounded and shaped by physical contours).

These connotations are displayed in the various Japanese words that translate ‘container’. One such is iremono (入れ物), which is literally 11

‘entered thing’, a space that can be entered. More directly, another Japanese word for ‘container’ is yôki (容器). This compound is made up of the two characters yô and ki, each of which taken separately also means ‘container’. The first character, yô, combines the radical for ‘house’ (宀) with that for ‘valley’ (谷), represented by contour lines and a mouth (口). The mouth in this context does not refer to the organ of speech, but to the form of the mouth, which is that of an empty cavern, arched over by the palate. This identification of mouth and cavern is one that is shared by many cultures, and remains as a trace in many languages including English, where ‘gap’ and ‘gape’, ‘to open the mouth wide’, share an etymology tracing to a word for ‘cavern’.

12

In the

nature of a visual pun, the character yô also contains the radical for ‘cave’ (穴), which shows a space (宀, the radical associated with the house) obtained by the removal (八) of rock or earth. (As shall be shown in the following, this identification of ‘space’ with the cave or cavern is a recurrent theme in the kanji conveying spatial notions.) In summary, the character yô shows a valley, a house and a cave; all these are hollow, and therefore able to contain things. The kanji for ki (器), the second character in the compound, shows four mouths (口) around a dog (犬). This character has been given some rather bizarre interpretations, but its meaning is clearer when it is realised that the ‘mouths’, having the shape of hollow caverns, are empty vessels arranged in 13

a pattern, perhaps on a table for ritual offerings. 226

Thinking through the gap

These considerations lead to the conclusion that in Japanese the vessel is not what contains, but is the contained, the cave- or valley-like hollow between the walls of the vessel, the space that can be filled. In this light, madori, the grasping of ma, is akin to holding hollow space between the hands. The hands measure between-spaces or container-spaces and, since ma is a pause in time as well as an interval in space, it is also a ‘holding of time-hollows’. This gains greater import when it is seen that yô (容), ‘container’ or, more correctly, ‘the contained’, or ‘the space of containment’, is also read as katachi, ‘form’. ‘Container’ and ‘form’ are the same word. For speakers of English, this carries images that are almost ‘unthinkable’ in terms of our accepted forestructures of understanding. In the Japanese outlook as conveyed in language, the form of an object is not the shape defined by its external contours, but is the between-space contained within those defining contours. Form is not solid, but hollow; not the surround, but the surrounded; not the outer appearance or the material presence, but the inner space and ‘etherial’ absence.

14

Forms are not solids positioned in space, but spaces in

spaces. An accurate translation into Japanese of the idea of architecture as ‘forms in space’ is almost unimaginable; it becomes something like ‘a gapinterval of space–time within a gap-interval of space–time’. Architecture becomes a (dematerialised) matter of space, interstices, emptiness.

Empty space The emptying or ‘etherialising’ of forms evident in the Chinese characters prefigures the notions of ‘space’ found in Taoism. The eleventh chapter of the Tao-tê-ching, for example, tells us that a wheel is useful because its spokes converge on the empty space at its hub; a clay vessel is useful because of the emptiness within; and, though doors and windows are cut to make a house, we are only able to dwell in it because of the empty space within:

15

‘Therefore, taking advantage of what is, we recognize the utility of what is 16

not.’ The ‘man of Tao’ partakes of the ‘valley-like’ hollowness of forms: he is 17

‘vacant, like valleys that are hollow’.

The notion of the ‘emptiness’ of forms, shown when the ancient pictographs are deciphered, predisposed the Chinese to a ready acceptance of Mahâyâna doctrines of emptiness when they arrived from India in the first to second centuries of the Common Era. These doctrines have had a profound and lasting effect on every aspect of Chinese and Japanese art, thought and culture. The early Sanskrit Prajñâpâramitâ Sûtras give an account of âkâsha (‘space’) that give it qualities similar to those of Cartesian space, the 227

Interpretation in architecture

space of unlimited extent. In this sense it is frequently used as a metaphor for ‘emptiness’ (shûnyatâ), a basic concept in Mahâyâna thought. As used in Buddhism, ‘emptiness’ is synonymous with Awakening (bodhi, bodai ), total knowledge (sarvajñâna, issaichi ), wisdom (prajñâ, hannya), and all the other terms used to name the ineffable and unnameable reality that Buddhist practice aims to realise. Emptiness is said to be wholly beyond description or conceptualising. To give some hint of its nature, however, the sutras resort to the trope of empty space (âkâsha). The primary symbolic force of space comes from considering it as infinite and connoting vastness, undifferentiatedness, formlessness, sameness, extension in all directions, non-resistance, that part of the lived-world that is most akin to perfect, transcendental freedom 18

as conceived in Buddhist thought.

Space, which is unbroken, undivided and without multiplicity or 19

20

differentiation, is compared to nirvâna, 21

Buddhas,

22

to the Mahâyâna,

to the boundless knowledge of the 23

and to perfect wisdom.

This might seem to give us a means of conceiving Buddhist notions of space and emptiness in terms that are familiar, but when we look at the way the two terms âkâsha and shûnyatâ were translated into Chinese we find ourselves once more in unfamiliar territory, where ‘space’ and ‘emptiness’ retract, as it were, to the interior of phenomena. The character kû (空) was used to translate both âkâsha and shûnyatâ, and is in turn translated into English as ‘space’ or ‘emptiness’, depending on context. An etymological examination of kû shows that in the Sino-Japanese setting the Sanskrit terms have taken on what might be called a more ‘primordial’ meaning, one in keeping with the earlier Taoist and pre-Taoist outlook and with the analyses of ‘container’ and ‘form’ given above. Kû (空), used to translate both âkâsha and shûnyatâ, is literally ‘sky’, and by extension ‘space’ and ‘the void’. The kanji for kû shows the radical for ‘cave’ (穴, explained above), plus 工, which is the ancient square used in building and by extension, ‘work’. Hence kû is an artificial (工) excavation (穴), an empty space in the sense of a cavern. It reads as ‘sky’ in that the dome of the sky is cave-like. It is immediately apparent that it shares the meanings of the character for yô (容), ‘container’, given above; and that when the Chinese chose the character kû to translate âkâsha, ‘space’, and shûnyatâ, ‘emptiness’, they were not thinking of these as a limitless extent but as akin to the contained space of a cavern that has been hewn from the rock.

24

The emptiness conveyed by the Chinese character has a much more tangible sense than is conveyed by the words ‘emptiness’ or ‘empty 228

Thinking through the gap

space’. It has been noted that Indian thinking tends to abstraction and the metaphysical and that Chinese thought, by contrast, tends to concreteness of expression. This mirrors qualities inherent in the Chinese ideographs, which portray what is presented by the senses and only reluctantly dwell on whatever is beyond the immediately perceived. That is, they tend to recreate the tangible world, and to avoid the abstract.

25

One consequence of this is

that the Chinese written language is inherently undisposed to ‘metaphysical’ interpretations of emptiness like those betrayed in English by the use of the capital E in ‘Emptiness’, which usage removes it from the world of everyday experience to the level of the transcendent and abstract. Emptiness (without the capital E), in the original Chinese kenning, is of the here and now. It is the emptiness of things themselves, and not the emptiness of the space in which they are positioned. A further, and most remarkable consequence revealed by delving into the original meanings of characters, is that there is a close connection between ‘emptiness’ (kû), ‘container’ (yô) and ‘form’ (katachi ), entities that seem to have nothing in common in the English terminology. According to the etymologies of the Chinese characters, however, they are all ‘caves’, hollowedout spaces. The meanings of ‘form’ and ‘emptiness’ interfuse. This gives additional nuances of meaning to the famous formula of the Prajñâ-pâramitâ 26

literature, ‘Forms are emptiness, and emptiness is form’. This is now seen to have an immediacy and tangibility that is lost in the ‘metaphysical’ overtones 27

of the usual English translation.

A frequent synonym of kû is mu (無), rendered as ‘nothingness’ in the standard translations of Buddhist texts. Here again, however, an examination of the character reveals meanings that have a different nuance to the English word ‘nothingness’. The original version of the character shows ‘four tens’ of men, that is a large number of them, felling the trees in a tract of wooded land. It also contains a primitive character meaning ‘to hide’, with the derived meanings of ‘to vanish’, ‘to disappear’ and thus 28

having connotations of negation. The character mu, in its original meaning, did not mean ‘nothingness’ in the sense of a total absence, but depicted the making of a clearing in a forest, a clearing that is surrounded by the unfelled trees, a clearing in the double sense conveyed by its etymology of a space that has been ‘cleared’ and opened to the light (Lat. clarus). Students of Heidegger will hear the resonances.

30

29

It should also be noted

that the word ‘thing’ in ‘nothing’ or ‘no thing’, derives from the Old Saxon word meaning a deliberative assembly, where twelve kings sat in a circle around a clearing. In this primordial sense, the very form of the ‘thing’ replicates that of zero, a circle enclosing an empty space,

31

which could just

as well be a depiction of ‘form’, ‘vessel’ or ‘emptiness’ in the way these are understood in Chinese. 229

Interpretation in architecture

What is to be understood from these analyses is that in the world figured by the Chinese characters, space in all its manifestations – in emptiness, in containers, in forms – is an inner space, a between space, the space of ma. This is brought out in compounds such as kûkan (空間), a common designation of ‘space’ in Japanese, combining the ideogram kû with that for kan, which is another reading of the character for ma. There is a further conflation with ma in that kû is a source of light, which relates it to the imagery of the sun shining through the gap of the doors in the character for ma. As was said before, the primary meaning of kû is ‘sky’, and the dome of the sky not only has the shape of a cave and hollow space, but also is the abode and source of the light of the sun, the moon and the stars.

32

In a recurrent metaphor in the Mahâyâna literature, âkâsha, ‘space’, is

identified with light. The identity has an etymological basis: âkâsha is from the root kash, associated with light and luminosity, as in terms such as kashita, ‘to be visible, or shine’.

33

34

Space is said to shine brilliantly. The metaphor is

frequently affirmed in Buddhist writings. Thus the sun shining between the leaves of the gate of ma is the light of âkâsha, metaphorically identified with the light of emptiness (kûkô 空光). That is, the ideogram for ma shows a Sun Door, and thus invokes a theme that recurs in the myths of many peoples. Coomaraswamy has explored 35

this imagery in depth in a number of classic essays. The leaves of the door stand for the ‘pairs of opposites’ or ‘contraries’ of whatever sort, between which those who seek Awakening must pass, thus surpassing antinomies and attaining the light of Wisdom. In a Buddhist variation on the theme, the gate of ma equates Shan-tao’s White Path in the Pure Land doctrines. The narrow or ‘strait’ path runs from this world of samsâra to the Pure Land of Amitâbha, the Buddha of Infinite Light, crossing between the two turbulent seas of fire and water, representing all oppositions.

36

The imagery also relates to the Buddhist

doctrines of pâramitâ (haramitta), ‘perfection’ or ‘mastery’, which is closely associated with the notion of crossing to the other shore, a trope for the attainment of Awakening. In these tropes the imagery of the gate expresses the fundamental Mahâyâna doctrine that phenomena are unsubstantial and lack self-nature (jishô, 37

svabhâva). They are in an ever-changing state of impermanence (mujô), in which ‘the world of distinctions and boundaries, of order and semi-permanence 38

is constantly dissolving into the no-thing in between’. All things are essentially empty. The gate, therefore, is the gate of passage from this world of illusion and darkness to the realm of emptiness, which is that of reality and light.

230

Thinking through the gap

Emptiness, existence and the middle In this context, the gate is the opening to another place. By slipping through the gate of opposites one escapes from this world and enters nirvâna or a pure land, a world of transcendental reality. This mythopoeic play locates reality in some ‘metaphysical’ place that lies elsewhere, beyond the physical. There is, however, a paradox in this formulation. To speak of reality as lying elsewhere is to set up a dichotomy between here and there, and thus shut tight the leaves of the gate one tries to pass. It is characteristic of the Mahâyâna to dissolve such paradox by a process of erasure. Having constructed symbolic schemata, employing them as expedient means intended to give some hint of reality, it then carefully deconstructs them, in an ever-continuing process of cancelling out whatever has been previously posited. Having taught that reality lies in another place, it then relocates it in the here and now. Neither Amitâbha nor the pure land is in the west, or above, or in any other direction, but are in one’s own mind.

39

Emptiness is not transcendent, but in things themselves. This is expressed in doctrines such as that of the threefold truth (santai ). The first truth, the truth of emptiness (kûtai 空諦), is that all things are essentially empty (kû). Nevertheless, things do have a transitory existence, and in our everyday affairs we must take them as having at least a provisional reality. This is the second truth, the truth that phenomena have a temporary existence (ketai 假諦). However, these two truths contradict one another and stand in opposition. A third truth, the truth of the middle (chûtai 中諦),

40

reconciles the opposites by saying that the reality of things is located in a ‘midspace’ between the opposites. This middle is not a mean, nor even a non-dual merging of the dichotomous extremes, but is where they are simultaneously joined and yet held apart, where they merge and yet retain their identities. It is like the crack that unites but at the same time separates the two halves of a 41

tile that has been broken and then rejoined. Reality, in this Buddhist teaching, lies not in forms as they appear to us in everyday, unexamined experience and as filtered by language, nor in their emptiness when examined in the light of meditational experience and analytical thought, but in the middle between them.

42

Further, the dichotomy formed by the two truths of emptiness and

temporary existence can be taken to represent all oppositions of negation and affirmation, which are all subsumed within the truth of the middle.

The middle and the gate of ma In this deconstructed kenning, the gate of ma is the ‘non-gate’ (mumon, 無 門), the ‘gateless gate’ or ‘gate of nothingness’, which does not open to some 231

Interpretation in architecture

superior realm, but is itself the momentary merging of the Way and the goal to which it leads. It is not the way of entry to another place, but the Way of the Middle (chûdô 中道),

43

which does not lead to some desired end, but

is the end within itself. In this, the leaves of the gate are the opposition of emptiness and forms, and the light between the leaves is that of the middle truth that simultaneously combines and separates these opposites. Seen in this way, the gate of ma no longer represents, which is to say re-presences, something other than itself, but is itself the place–time where and when forms and their emptiness are revealed in their union/ disunion. It is the limen, line, pause, the boundary that stands between existence and non-existence, holding them together and yet holding them apart. The light of the middle shines through the gap where opposites merge and yet emerge. It is the light that slips between.

The middle and the arts The imagery of a middle way that is a slip or slippage between the opposites of existence and emptiness is recurrent in the Japanese arts. An example is given in the theories given by the master puppeteer Chikamatsu in his essay titled Kyojitsu Himaku Ron. Kyojitsu (虚 実) can be translated as ‘unreal and real’ but is also susceptible to a Buddhist interpretation, in which kyo (虚) is synonymous with kû, both words translating shûnyatâ, ‘emptiness’, and the two characters combine to form the compound kûkyo-na (空虚な) ‘empty’.

44

Jitsu (実) is the complement of kyo, being the apparently real of our everyday, unawakened experience. In a Buddhist kenning Chikamatsu’s title thus translates as something like ‘Doctrine of Emptiness, the “Real”, and the Skin Membrane (between them)’.

45

Himaku, the ‘skin-membrane’, refers to the

clothing of the puppet, which conceals an empty space. The puppet is nothing but a piece of empty cloth, and the clothes of the puppet form a membrane that separates and joins the apparently ‘real’ world of commonplace experience, and emptiness, represented by the empty space within the puppet. This is to say, the skin-membrane corresponds to the middle truth (chûtai ) between emptiness (kû) and apparent existence (ke). The skill of the puppeteer consists in manipulating the membrane to bring out intimations of the emptiness of all existences, and merging that emptiness with what we mistakenly take to be the self-subsisting reality of the things of the world. By way of this merging of forms and emptiness, in the hands of a skilled puppeteer the puppet conveys reality with greater force than a human actor can do.

46

This evocation of emptiness by way of an intermediate betweenness, represented in the case of the puppet by the skin-membrane formed by the clothing, is a characteristic of Japanese traditional arts generally. 232

Thinking through the gap

The defining characteristic of arts such as ‘black ink’ (sumie) painting and the dry landscape (kare-sansui ) garden is the juxtaposition of forms on an empty background. The forms draw attention to and articulate the emptiness of the background, but the artwork as a whole is the site of a fusion/diffusion of forms and emptiness. It is a ‘middle place’, where, for those who are attuned, forms and emptiness interlock in fusion, revealing a glimpse (a gleam) of 47

the real nature of things in their lack of self-nature. The figure/background relationship continually changes; there is an inversion of the ways they are read, two equally valid interpretations, involving the sort of ambiguity shown in an Escher drawing. As the position of the eye shifts, figure and ground swing back and forth, a pendulum of repeated reversal. The arts of ma awaken us to the Middle Way, providing a gap through which a glimpse of the light of the fusion/non-fusion of forms and their emptiness can slip. In the artwork, background emptiness is fused with foreground forms to reveal the gleam of their true reality.

Ma as cut-continuance Ma is a space–time that stands as a middle gap or pause between two objects in space or two events in time. Occupying this intermediate space and time it acts as intermediary. It simultaneously separates and joins two things. It divides and yet provides continuation. This is conveyed by a term used in 48

aesthetics, kire-tsuzuki [切れ続き], ‘cut-continuance’. This term is applied to describe an element that simultaneously interrupts events in space or time, but also acts as a bridge to continuing events. An example, frequently cited in the Japanese literature, is the kire-ji [切れ字] the ‘cut-syllable’ in haiku, which creates a pause but also leads into what follows. Bashô’s frog poem gives an example: Furuike ya – Old pond ya kawazu tobikomu – frog jumps in mizu no oto. – sound of water. The cut-syllable ya provides a pause that establishes the mood (quietness, tranquillity) of the first line of the poem, and at the same time leads into the contrasting part that follows. Kire-tsuzuki, ‘cut-continuance’, manifests in all the traditional Japanese arts. In the art of flower arrangement (ikebana, literally ‘living flowers’), for example, the flowers are cut, which is tantamount to ending their life, but they continue to live on, their life-force and beauty continuing to shine forth with greater intensity in the arrangement. Similarly, the kare-sansui, ‘dry 233

Interpretation in architecture

landscape’ garden consisting of rocks and gravel, is based on the principle of cutting away the natural landscape, so that it withers to its essentials but continues to bring forth the dry bones of landscape beauty. Kire-tsuzuki is also shown in ‘borrowed scenery’ (shakkei ), in which a wall or hedge does not simply define a garden by cutting it off from the distant scenery beyond, but also acts to make that scenery continuous with the garden. Various texts in the Japanese literature on aesthetics compare cutcontinuance in art to the basic rhythms of human life. It corresponds to the moment at which inhalation of the breath ends and exhalation commences; the momentary pause between systole and diastole of the heart; the pause between one step and the next in walking; and the mid-space between life and death (Chapter 10).

Cut-continuance and the slash49 The functioning of cut-continuance might be likened to that of the slash that joins and yet at the same time disjoins words having contrary meanings. The slash in ‘is/is not’ plays a double role. It cuts the terms apart but yet maintains continuity between them, showing that they relate to each other. The slash is the copula, which fastens together (copulare) even as it distinguishes (etymologically ‘pricks apart’) two terms. It punctuates them (parts them with points or stops, which are pauses). ‘Slash’ is from OF esclashier, ‘to break in pieces’, which is also the meaning of ‘crack’. For something to be broken into pieces, however, it must previously be whole, so the slash contains within itself whole and shattered, unified and discrete. To slash is also to show by way of a hint, as in ‘slashed sleeves’, which are slit to give a glimpse of the 50

lining, the other side of the cloth. The slash is etymologically a slip, and is the place of slippage between the opposites of is and is not. In this it plays a role like that of metaphor, which, like the slash, combines ‘is’ and ‘is not’ and therefore slashes even as it joins. The gap in the gate of ma, through which the light shines, is the between-slash, the slash of cut-continuance, the mid-space and limen. It is, as was shown, the place of slippage, of escape. It is also that which bridges 51

gaps in understanding.

Kûkai on language as gap-pattern The functioning of ma as the site and silence for the emergence of reality is also demonstrated in Kûkai’s analysis of the nature of language.

52

Ryûichi

Abé, in his admirable book on Kûkai, devotes a chapter to discuss Kûkai’s Shôji 234

Thinking through the gap

Jissô Gi, (声字実相義, ‘Voice, Letter, Reality, Meaning’).

53

Kûkai’s argument is

complex and subtle and involves a large number of technical terms deriving from the Shingon Buddhist doctrine. This chapter can only give a brief summary of those aspects of this most remarkable work that directly relate to the discussion of ma.

54

As does Derrida, Kûkai gives priority to writing over the spoken word. Under the generic term ‘letter’ (ji 字) he includes both spoken and written words. These are able to convey meaning because they form patterns (mon 文), like those in brocade. The voice produces vibrations, patterns of sound in the air, literally figures of speech (mon 文), and in this sense, Kûkai says, ‘Voice has first to be writing before it ceases to be a meaningless cry and becomes speech’. Written letters are likewise patterns made up of visual elements. Taking this further, all things perceived by the senses or the mind, and all events in time, are so many patterns, made up of visual, aural, tactile, 55

sapid, olfactory and mental components. The whole world is thus seen as a text composed of letters. Everything perceived by the senses or the mind is a form of writing. Our ability to interpret these patterns depends on a process of differentiation (shabetsu). For example, an object perceived by the eye is seen as something different from other things in that it combines colour, shape and movement in a particular, distinctive pattern that differentiates it from other patterns, that is, other objects. The same is true for every entity perceived by the senses or cognised by the mind. All things and events are characters (monji 文字), marks forming an individual pattern. These differentiated patterns give rise to names. Differentiation is the basis of the meanings conveyed by language, both oral and written. Further, the letter is the primary topos of differentiation and the differentiation articulated by writing makes possible the articulation of the world by way of names. That is, writing, in this inclusive sense, breaks up into discrete parts the primordial state of nebulous non-differentiation (chaos in the original Greek sense of a formless void, the indistinctness of complete con-fusion), thus giving rise to cosmos, the world made meaningful. The text of the word is made legible. This process Abé felicitously calls ‘semiogenesis’. That is to say, language comes before being, and not vice versa; objects are generated by the ability of language to articulate differentiation. Language produces things from the ‘originally unproduced’ (honpushô) by way of differentiation. One consequence of these observations is that the ‘things’ that make up our world only exist for us in so far as they are signs, letters, patterns, words, that arise from and depend on differentiation from other signs, letters, patterns, words. They have no self-nature (jishô, svabhâva), no essence or self-presence, but are dependent for their quasi-existence on differentiation 235

Interpretation in architecture

from other signs. Things, that is to say, only exist for us in so far as they are 56

located in an inter-reflecting network of references. They arise, or come to presence, in what in Buddhism is termed ‘dependent co-origination’ (engi, pratîtya-samutpâda). They are in themselves empty, and only appear to presence to the extent that they are differentiated by language from within a field of interdependent allusions. The burden of Kûkai’s exposition is that the things of the world are only to the extent that language produces differentiation, which is to say gaps that distinguish one thing from another. Each gap is a ‘betweenness’ (ma), and it is the play of ma – the silences that differentiate the sounds of speech and the blank spaces (kûhaku, literally, ‘empty white’) between and behind the marks of inscription – that allows for any and all meaning to emerge.

57

Meaning shines through the gaps in time or in space. Language is a shining of emptiness through the gaps to produce the apparent or quasi-reality (jishô) 58

generated by voice and writing.

Architecture as writing Viewed in this context, architecture is seen to be a kind of writing, the inscribing of patterns of cut-continuance, of marks separated and yet joined by spaces of emptiness. Designing can be re-thought as ‘grasping betweenness’, which is the inscription of gap-patterns, rather than the manipulation of forms as objects having solid substantiality, an ‘essential’ reality in themselves, but now seen as ‘containers’ of betweenness, relevant and useful for their hollowness. This is to write a text that is legible because of the interplay of containers of empty space. It is to think of designing not as a process of creating or manipulating forms, but of clearing a space, a gap, for form/emptiness to declare itself, a declaration that is at once a sounding forth and a clarification, a ‘clearing’ (from 59

Latin clarus, ‘bright’) that is both an opening up and a shining.

To design is to assemble materials in ways that mark out places for the emergence of middle-ness, to use materials to trace out places of the Way (dôjo), spaces in which the interaction or interplay of things and human actions trace out ever-changing inscriptions of gap-pause patterns.

Cut-continuance and the line These considerations indicate that the basic elements – lines, spaces, etc. – used by the architectural designer when sketching and drawing up his or her designs on sheets of paper, in the workshop or on the computer screen do not have universally valid meanings, but carry culturally-loaded connotations. The 236

Thinking through the gap

Western designer takes for granted the significance of the lines s/he traces. They most often represent walls or other things that divide one space from another, or an edge that separates one material from another; at any rate the line delineates the external limits of a form, understood as having substance, an underlying reality; or else it determines the contours of a space, similarly thought of as a self-subsisting entity. The line establishes a dichotomy by dividing inside from outside. The line, in conventional Western thinking, marks the disjunction between what is to be excluded and what included, and since cludere is ‘to shut’, shuts out and shuts in. The line marks off two opposing spaces, as when we say we draw the line at something. The line marks a limit, from 60

limitus, ‘frontier’, the place of confrontation with what lies outside.

There are, however, other ways of thinking the line. As was mentioned, in ‘borrowed scenery’ (shakkei ) gardens, the wall acts as a line that defines the limits of the garden, but at the same time invites the eye to take in what lies beyond. The lines in a sumie painting have a similar ambiguity. The sumie brush stroke outlines a ‘form’, but it also draws the eye to the space beyond the line and to other forms in that space. It marks out forms on or from an empty background, but at the same time connects them with that emptiness and to the other forms in that emptiness. The lines drawn by the brush in sumie painting do not so much delimit or delineate forms as make patterns, not in any trivial sense, but in that of inscribing lines that connect the emptiness of phenomena. The line, in this understanding, has a degree of ‘porosity’, acting as a membrane between quasi-empty forms and emptiness, and in this sense is the edge of the middle way between things that appear to stand opposed or separate. The brush stroke (and ‘to stroke’ in its origins is ‘to strike’) is an edge that ‘cuts’ or ‘cuts out’ the form from its environs but also draws in what surrounds the form. It is the slash, marking the place of junction/disjunction. The Japanese word for line, sen, also means ‘track’ or ‘route’. To follow a track is to move through space and time; the track is a way to be 61

followed. The lines of the sumie painting trace out tracks for the eye to follow, retracing the rhythmic movements of the brush. The supreme form of sumie is calligraphy, and in this the eye follows the dance of the brush as it enlivens the surface of the silk or paper, and at the same time reads the words the brush inscribes, a convergence of verbal and visual patterns of cut-continuance.

Cut-continuance and the screen The line is membranous, the trace of a skin that separates and joins the ‘body’ of the object with what lies without. The wall of the traditional Japanese house 237

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has the same membranous quality. The inside and outside of the house are separated by shôji screens, sliding panels made of translucent paper. When closed, the screens still give intimations of what is outside, by changes in light intensity and silhouettes. The shôji (in which the character shô is ‘hindrance’) hinders the sight, but at the same time partially allows what is happening on the other side to be seen. The screen, which the dictionary defines as ‘a partition that separates without completely cutting off one from another’, functions as a medium of cut-continuance. The shôji acts to join/disjoin two spaces, the inside and outside, the human and the natural. When the shôji are opened or removed, their function of cutcontinuance is played by the engawa, translated into English as ‘veranda’, but literally a ‘connecting border’. This is the narrow walkway that runs between the rooms of the house and the garden, acting as a connecting link between them. As Kurokawa has instructed us, the engawa is the between space, the ma, that connects/disconnects the inside and outside of the house.

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The silhouettes on the shôji give a hint of the world beyond the screen. The same hinting at something beyond the confines of the room is also conveyed by the fusuma, the sliding non-translucent paper panels that divide the interior spaces of the house. The fusuma is not an impervious barrier for the eye, but is painted with landscapes, which lead the eye into layers of space beyond the surface of the screen. The sumie landscape typically shows a track 63

to be followed, leading into the mountains and to an unknown beyond. Once again, the fusuma acts as a cut-continuance, beckoning beyond and dissolving boundaries. Shôji and fusuma are not walls, immobile masses fixed in space, but continually change, either being closed, slid to various positions or removed entirely. Divisions between internal spaces and between inside and outside are fluid, in perpetual flux, giving the architecture a sense of movement and the transitory, a play of ever-changing patterns.

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These fairly well-known aspects of the traditional Japanese house are not repeated here to evoke aesthetic or formalistic qualities or with the aim of adding these to our own aesthetic and compositional vocabulary, but in order to show how cut-continuance, with its implications of a middle way, inheres within the very fabric of the building and the Japanese concept of what constitutes architecture.

Conclusion It is comparatively easy to see how concepts such as ma, madori and kiretsuzuki translate into formal and aesthetic expressions, because these accord with familiar Western ways of thinking. It is comparatively easy, for example, to 238

Thinking through the gap

borrow from the Japanese aesthetic and use it in the service of a compositional and pictorial manipulation of forms. To accommodate these concepts within accustomed molds of thought and practice, however, is to vitiate in advance what their difference might teach us. Such strategies of appropriation only carry over surface appearances (to which the word ‘aesthetic’ traces), and occlude the deeper differences that might question our customary ways of thinking and enlarge our understanding of what architecture is and what it does. It should be emphasised, once more, that ma is not primarily of interest for its formalistic and aesthetic applications, nor even for the insights it might give into what constitutes the distinctive qualities of Japanese architecture and art. Its main relevance lies elsewhere, in the way it stands as an opposite to our own familiar and accepted ways of thinking architecture. The Japanese and Western notions of architectural space stand over against each other in the manner of the opposing leaves of the gate of ma itself. The gap between them is a place of rupture, but it is precisely in the rift between oppositions that the light of understanding may glimmer. Ma opens a gap in which to rethink the architectural object. Seen through the prism of Japanese language and Chinese ideographs, the solidity of the architectural object melts into the fluidity of betweenness; forms dissolve into transitory assemblages of gaps and pauses. Seen in this way, a building is not self-referential or autonomous, but is merely a transitory quasientity that emerges by way of differentiation generated by cut-continuance. It is not a ‘composition’ in the sense of a permanent arrangement of forms and spaces, but a ‘composite’, an impermanent and tenuous cohesion of parts that are constantly transforming in accordance with the activities that take place in and around them. The spaces of a building are event-spaces, which only ‘exist’ (‘stand out’) to the extent that they are the sites of human movement and activity and that they inter-reflect and interact with the parts making up the patterns of the wider and encompassing text, the networks and lattices of cut-continuance formed by and with society, ecology, sustainability, equipmentality, materiality, technology and all the other components of the total environment. At the very least, these considerations raise a question concerning what might be called the ‘globalatinisation’ of architecture,

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the homogeneity

of the practices of design across the world, which are based on Western modes of conceiving space and forms, modes that are suffused with notions structured by the Latin-derived languages. The hegemony of these modes of understanding is now so widespread and exclusive in every part of the world that one might assume that they have some sort of universal validity. This assumption does not stand up when it is realised that the Japanese language embeds ways of viewing space and architecture that differ markedly from 239

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those generally accepted in architectural research, practice and pedagogy. There is a strong likelihood that an in-depth examination of many other nonWestern languages would also reveal alternatives to the prevailing norms. Far from having universal validity, the ways of thinking space, forms and design in architecture embody pre-assumptions that are of an exclusively Western provenance, and are therefore simply the expression of a particular and parochial outlook that has gained widespread credence and adherence because of historical contingencies. There are other ways of thinking space and architecture. To argue otherwise is to lend comfort to an architectural colonialism.

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Chapter 13

Random thoughts on the Way

Figure captions (clockwise from top left ) 1

Torii gates, Kyoto, Japan

2

Arran, Scotland

3

Torii gates, Kyoto, Japan

4

Nikko, Japan

Chapter 13

Random thoughts on the Way

For reasons best known to the conveners, a recent architectural conference 1

was given the title ‘Fellow Travellers’. This got us to thinking on the theme of travel. During the cold war the ‘fellow traveller’ was someone sympathetic to Communism and its aims; someone who shared with card-carrying comrades a greater or lesser degree of commitment to the ideology and political ends of the cause; who journeyed with like-minded companions toward a common, utopian goal. This chapter will develop another metaphor of travel, that of excursion and return. Fellow travellers on this path do not share an ideology, if this is taken to mean a prescribed set of beliefs or rules for action; nor do they share a telos, since they have no clear idea of where the path is heading. This being so, even those travelling in the opposite direction are not necessarily enemies, but might turn out to be friendly and helpful, bearing tales of what lies in store. The theme of excursion and return is ubiquitous and perennial in the myths, legends, folklore and literature of all peoples. As introduced in Chapter 7 (Design amnesia), it also serves as a master metaphor in philosophical hermeneutics, where it is seen as the movement at work in all processes of interpretation and understanding. Here the metaphor will be deployed to bring out its relevance for architecture. Five variations of the metaphor will be visited in the manner of way stations, temporary stops on the way.

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First way station – Bildung The German word Bildung corresponds roughly to ‘education’, but it carries rich connotations lacking in the English term. It designates primarily ‘the properly 2

human way of developing one’s natural talents and capacities’. It is ‘education’ in the sense of a self-formation, the learning of a way of knowing and a way of being, education as a self-cultivation and growth. Gadamer uses Bildung as a metaphor for the process whereby understanding is attained. Hegel, as cited by Gadamer, says that, When a man gives himself over to work so wholly that it becomes distanced from his personal needs and private desires, he not only allows what he makes to assume its own form but does the same to himself. In the selflessness of serving, he becomes himself more fully.

3

The idea here is that in Bildung one gives oneself over to something other than oneself, and by this process of giving over, becomes more fully oneself. Giving oneself over to something other is a going out to the other, so that Bildung involves the notion of leaving home, the locus of what one already understands and is at home with, and going out into a new place that is strange and unfamiliar. As one comes to understand this other place, as it becomes familiar, it comes to be a new home. You now feel at home in the place that was previously alien. This new homeliness has changed who you are. Returning to your starting point, your original home, it is changed. You see it in a new way, and understand it differently. As Heraclitus says, when the 4

traveller returns home, he is different from and more than when he set out.

One’s prior home is now understood not as a final homestead, a home where one stands steadfast, but a way station, a starting place for entry into the alien; and what was alien is now one’s own. One has not only found a new home in what was seen as alien, but found a part of oneself in the alien. What was foreign is no longer distant, but brought home to oneself (as when we say ‘it was brought home to me that …’). It seemed strange simply because we did not recognise ourselves in it. The alienness of the other was a projection of our own self-alienation; we did not realise it as a possibility we already possessed. Going out to the unfamiliar, and making it familiar was a disclosure of one’s own latent potentialities. This trajectory of alienation and reunion, of finding more than what one started out with, is the story, recurrent in myth and folklore, of those who go in search of treasure, and return home to find it buried under their own hearth. The ‘treasure’ is understanding; by going out into the unknown and coming back to where we started, we enrich our understanding. 244

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In its most fecund interpretation, excursion and return is not going out in a straight line and then retracing one’s steps, coming back over what is now familiar ground to where one started, but is movement in a circle. In this kenning, every step of the way, right back to the home whence one started, is a movement into and through the strange and otherwise. Having returned, enriched, the intrepid traveller starts out again, tracing a wider, more encompassing circle, thus inscribing circles within circles, as in the metaphor of the hermeneutical circle.

Bildung and the design studio Gadamer claims that Bildung is the very essence of the human sciences. In contrast to the methodological sciences, the human sciences give training in

Bildung, processes that foster the growth of understanding and practical reasoning. Whereas the methodological sciences are concerned with the teaching of techniques and rational thinking in the service of quantitatively definable outcomes, the human sciences pertain to enculturation in the sense of a growth of the whole being. It hardly needs to be stated that support for education in this latter sense, in the sense of Bildung as the formation of being, is rapidly disappearing in the humanities as elsewhere. Education as a growth of understanding, the learning of ‘culture’ in its fullest meaning, has to operate against a utilitarian ethos of learning skills aimed solely at satisfying a narrowly vocational indigence. There is, however, at least one place where Bildung still persists in a schematic form, even if unrecognised by those who foster it. If the movement of excursion and return constitutes Bildung, then the design studio is essentially a site for learning in this form of education. The design process is hermeneutical, proceeding by way of interpretations that move back and forth in a movement of excursion and return, of repeatedly venturing out into the unfamiliar and returning to the starting point with enlarged understanding. Designing is a continuing cycle of expeditions into the foreign, and the studio is thus a site of Bildung. 5

This first way station lies in familiar territory, and is a home base and starting point for the meandering path traced in the following.

Second way station – the aimless wanderer As usually understood, the fellow traveller is one who journeys with an aim. She and her companions travel with a destination in mind. By contrast, there is the traveller who wanders aimlessly. 245

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‘To wander’ is ‘to go from country to country, or from place to place 6

without settled route or destination; to go aimlessly.’ The word relates to 7

‘wending’ and ‘winding’. To wander is to ramble, which is ‘to walk for pleasure, with or without a definite goal’. The OED says that the word ‘ramble’ probably comes from Old Dutch rammalen, ‘to wander about in a state of sexual excitement’. Even if the word has lost something with the passage of time, it nevertheless still implies going randomly, without a goal, but with an anticipation that interesting things will happen on the way. Wandering and rambling are unplanned; they are haphazard; they simply happen; they are happenings, a word not used here by happenstance. The ‘hap’ of ‘happen’ is ‘chance, luck, lot; a chance occurrence; or to come about by chance’. To wander is to give oneself over to whatever happens by chance. In Tamilnad in South India, when you meet someone on the path, he will ask, ‘Where are you going?’ It is good manners to reply, ‘I am simply going’, or, ‘Simply’ (summa), with a vague gesture with the hand in the 8

direction you’re going. That is sufficient. It is enough that you are simply walking on the path. You aren’t required to give reasons. If, on the other hand, you say, ‘I am going to the market’, then politeness requires the other to ask, ‘And what is the purpose of your going to the market?’. You have missed the opportunity to avoid the metaphysical imperative to give reasons for your going, the need to explain why you are going to the market or wherever. You have been asked to specify the utilitarian goal of your walking. You are in the realm of techno-rationalist justification. You must reply, ‘I am going to buy plantains’, and all is explained. The questioner is happy, and moves on. But he is just as happy, or even more so, when you simply say, ‘Simply’. You are simply going, perhaps just for the fun of it, or just for the sake of walking, or for no reason whatever. That you are wandering aimlessly does not seem to worry the Tamil interrogator. It shouldn’t worry us too much either. Simply going is following where the legs take you, the mind following the feet. Or else, and better, the mind and the legs following the path as one, without the mind ordering the legs about, or the legs tripping up the mind. This is conveyed in the Chinese character for Tao, the Way, which combines the radical for a foot (indicating ‘going’) with that for the head. You will be aware that the Way, which is the way of one’s life, is a master metaphor in the East. Taoism (‘Way-ism’) and the Way of Buddhism (symbolised by a Wheel, to indicate that it is a circular, and not a straight, or strait, Way) are two great expressions of the metaphor. One follows a Way that is training for living one’s life. In Japan, as elsewhere in the Far East, this training takes specialised forms: chadô, the way of tea; kendô, the way of the sword; jûdô, the way of gentleness; and so on. One’s craft or profession is a way, a way of gaining an understanding of the Way. One goes out to, gives oneself over to 246

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one’s work, and thereby grows in being. All who work are journeymen and women, who perform a ‘journey’, that is, literally, ‘a day’s work’. In this context the fellow traveller is anyone who works or walks on or in whatever way. Eastern Way-ism teaches that those who aimlessly walk a path are walked by the path. It is not so much that they follow where the path leads, but that the path and she who walks it are one; they move along together. This notion may sound strange in English, but is less so in Chinese, where there is a confluence of thing and event. In Chinese nouns and verbs are interchangeable, so that the ideogram for Tao, is at once ‘the Way’ and ‘going on the Way’. Each Chinese ideogram carries a twofold meaning; it is at once the thing and its thinging, reflecting to some extent the meanings of English gerunds such as ‘shipping’, and words like ‘ship’ itself, which can be used as a verb or a noun. In Chinese, a thing has an implicit quality of unfolding in time. The thing does not merely stand as an object in space, but continues in time. Space and time merge in the thing, and also in the ideogram that represents it. Thus, in the ideogram ‘Tao’, the distinction between the going on a path and the pathway itself is collapsed. The path and the person going on the path move forward together. This fusion of the thing and its thinging in the Chinese ideogram carries the import that a thing is not thought of as an ‘object’, but an e-vent (literally, a ‘coming out’). ‘Things’ in Chinese are happenings, which arise by chance. The event of a thing, the ‘fact of its happening’, is a ‘coming from’ or a ‘coming out’ by chance. It is a phenomenon, which is etymologically an ‘appearance’, a ‘coming into sight, a showing’. Things appear to us, show themselves forth, by chance, and chance (from Old French chêoir, ‘to fall’) is 9

a be-falling, by accident (from ac-cidere, ‘fall before’). Things and events both ‘be-fall’ by chance. Thus it is not so much we who ‘see’ or experience things as we travel, but that they are revealed,

10

or unfolded, before us. They present

themselves and are themselves presents, dis-covered not by but to us, and thus given as gifts. Our part is to accept these presents in a spirit of acceptance, allowing them room to reveal themselves, just as they are. Then the path reveals things; as you follow the path, prospects unfold. The job of the rambler is to keep moving, keep the eyes (and the mind) open, be aware and receptive. This presencing applies equally to thoughts as it does to other things. Thus, when we say ‘it occurs to me that …’ if we take the word ‘occur’ in its etymological sense, ideas run to meet us, present themselves by chance. We don’t have ideas; they come to us; thoughts are revealed to us in an appearing, just in the same way that ‘objects’ in a seemingly outside world 11

‘appear’ to us.

The ‘thinker’, therefore, is one who has happened upon things on the way, and wishes to share the happy discovery with others. To ‘happen 247

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upon’ implies that something happens to you; it happens out of its own accord. It makes itself noticed; it appears or discloses. Mahâyâna Buddhism teaches that things (rûpa, ‘forms’) and mental phenomena, just as they are,

sono mama, appear to us out of the Void, and recede back into the Void. Like the Buddhas, they are thus come and thus gone, tathâgatâ. ‘Experience’, whether of thoughts or of phenomena, is not ‘ours’; both thought and 12

phenomena are simply happenings that occur from out of the Void.

The Way of going that accords with this sense of happening is a leaving-be, sono-mama, ‘simply’ going, and going simply. Simple in the sense of uncomplicated; and not very bright. The Tao-te-ching extols the dull, the imprecise, the blurred, the ephemeral, all those qualities that are anathema to rationalism. Going on this Way is an ‘actionless activity’ (wei-wu-wei ), the action that accompanies and rises from ‘no-mind’, the mind that does not ‘know’ or think out what to do, or refer to principles and rules in order to make decisions. The closest thing to this in Western thought is the Greek and hermeneutical notion of phronesis. In the exercise of phronesis you do not ‘know’ how to act or judge until it happens, and then you know. You don’t act by reference to a set of principles that are already applied in prospect, but are moved to action or judgement by and in the happening. This letting-be is not mere passivity; it is a form of receptive awareness. It is a tension between oneself and what is encountered; it requires attention (a ‘stretching towards’). It allows the thing to ex-press itself as it is, and so im-press us. The (famous) rose that blooms without a reason only has significance for those who pause to look at it and ad-mire (‘look to’) it.

Aimlessly wandering in the design studio Some may be embarrassed if it is suggested that much of what takes place in the design studio is aimless wandering, or, going yet further, that aimless wandering is an essential part of designing. Let us transgress the boundaries of professional decorum. Professionalism demands a clear statement of the eventual destination of any course of action, ruling that just as every thing must have a reason for existing, so every action must have a purpose, and every procedure must be governed by rules or principles that guarantee projected outcomes. By contrast, when involved in the process of designing, a designer may have no sense of eventual destination. She does not know where the path leads; she does not seek reasons for what is encountered, but simply accepts them as given; and she has no rules to govern her reactions to them. She is caught up in and carried along by the process of going out into the unknown. She manifests, that is to say, all the characteristics of the aimless wanderer. 248

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By this reading the design process entails a good deal of aimless wandering, and could not function in its absence. Although there might be goals laid down for the design programme as a whole, in its actual working out designing takes on a life of its own, and no one knows exactly where it is leading. It seems that the greater the involvement of the designers and the more they give themselves over to the task and follow where it leads, the better the designing moves along. When designing is moving on nicely, it leads and the designer plays along; and it is then that ideas begin to emerge spontaneously. The designer does not ask the reason why certain ideas come to the fore at certain stages of the working out of the design. Design ideas simply appear. They are suddenly now and here, coming from nowhere. They were ‘in the air’, and happen upon the designer, just as the designer happens upon them. They appear by chance, and are worked out, or worked into the scheme or abandoned, as it works out at the time and on the spot. This is not done by reference to principles or rules, but simply happens, by way of practical understanding. Designing, in the ordinary state of affairs and if it is going well, has no need to resort to rules or principles. Quite simply, principles stand in the way. A principle is a general rule that does not change with circumstance, but stands firm in every particular case of its application. In its standing firm the principle stands against the flow of the way. The principle, in so far as it is ‘timeless’, sacrifices kinesis to stasis. A principle, to warrant the name, must be immutable, that is, unmoving. It stands still. Thus a ‘person of principle’ is one who has a stance, who stands for something; he or she is prepared to stand up for and stand by certain principles that stand forever. The notion of principle is the very antithesis of movement. Principles are rules that have set solid; when one turns to principles, the way of design loses its fluidity of movement, and sets into solid globules of ‘timeless’ truth. Time, the ‘essence’ of movement on the way, is stopped and fixed in place. Therefore, when designing is flowing along properly, the designer is not a person of principle, because recourse to principles brings the process to a standstill. The free movement of excursion and return is stopped in its track, and the designer is reduced to working to rule. The absence of movement precludes any enhancement of understanding. Designers, by contrast to those who have principles, do not take a stand, thus coming to a standstill, but are always on their way. They do not stop moving, but are ‘moved’, that is, are moved toward something, go out towards and are drawn to it. Moving toward is a being moved, in its several senses. The designer is moved towards things and ideas as he or she designs, and is moved by them. They propel her on the path. 249

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The person of principle is committed, and so also is the designer when caught up in designing, but in a different sense. Commitment in this context is a joining with and sending out (L. com-mittere) to the work to be 13

done, a careful and sympathetic openness to and awareness of what comes in to one’s mind or through the end of the pencil (or onto the screen), an easygoing and trustful willingness to accept what reveals itself, not casting it aside as irrational or valueless because it does not seem to have a reason or use. Commitment in this sense is a willingness to experience whatever is met with on the path of designing with anticipation, and an acknowledgment, that what it manifests is true and relevant to the task at hand. This openness is 14

prerequisite for any understanding. Without that initial commitment, that prior acknowledgment, there is no point in even looking to whatever the way unfolds. Commitment is defined in the OED as ‘engagement or involvement that restricts freedom of action’. The person who is playing out and playing along with the movement of the way of design, is both engaged and involved, caught up in the game, but without any restriction of freedom of action. On the contrary, giving herself over to the game, a skilful player of the game of design moves freely with its movement. In sum, the design studio represents everything that is anathema to professional orthodoxies. It is aimless, lacks principles and subverts commitment. Far from being reprehensible, however, these traits offer a model for other disciplines in the humanities. They are Bildung in action.

Third way station – history Let us imagine a motorist driving along a road on which she has recently encountered a large number of stop signs. When she sees a sign coming up ahead, she takes it to be yet another stop sign, and begins to slow down. As she get closer to the sign, however, she sees that it is a sign for a pedestrian crossing, and since there are no pedestrians in sight, she begins to speed up again. Her understanding of the meaning of the sign has altered. The next time she sees a sign in the distance, she will not automatically assume that it is a stop sign but understand that it might be another pedestrian sign, so while preparing to stop she also looks out for pedestrians. The motorist projects an interpretation onto the approaching sign on the basis of previous experience; she then revises this interpretation when it is found to be a misunderstanding; but the revised understanding also alters the way in which she interprets what she encounters later. Thus understanding goes, back and forth, round and round. 250

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This is a variation on the theme of excursion and return. What we encounter on the way alters our understanding of what went before; and the altered understanding of what went before in turn alters our pre-understanding of what lies ahead. Our understanding grows by projection, by anticipating what is to come, and our understanding appropriates what it understands. Therefore it can be said that fellow travellers on the way of excursion and return are always already further along the path than they are ‘in fact’. Where they are on the way at any moment is a projection from where they were before; and where they will be is already thrown ahead of them. They are, in a sense, always already at a destination, but the destination is never reached, because it changes at each step they take. Further, walking on the way is not so much a matter of walkers directing their steps but of being thrown, impelled, from and by the past into what lies ahead. The past plays into the future. The way that has been traversed shines forward into present understanding, both conscious and tacit, and ahead into what is yet to come. In this way it establishes a continuity between past, present and future. This involves the strange paradox that in looking to the past we are looking ahead. What we understand from the past plays into what we understand of what lies before us; but as we encounter what lies ahead, as it comes into the headlights of our understanding, as it were, our revised understanding of what we encounter loops back, in a circle, to transform our stock of pre-understandings. This is the way of the historian, who, like the motorist, is caught up in the interplay of the past, the present and the future. The historian who is on the way of history is not an antiquarian, interested only in what has gone before, but is the preserver of memory, recognising that what has gone before plays into how we understand what is happening now and what might happen down the track. As memory, history is a store of prejudgements from which to draw in order to enable us to cope with whatever might occur now and on the road ahead. Thus the familiar adage that those who forget or ignore history are bound to repeat it can be interpreted to mean that unless the past is relived in new ways, that is, allowed to play into the present, we can have no grip on the future. History is important because by throwing light on the past it illuminates the future.

Fourth way station – alien traditions When the traveller returns home she has more than she had when she left. What she brings home, however, depends on where she has been and what 251

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she has experienced. The value of the treasure of understanding she brings home is proportional to the difficulty of the terrain and the remoteness of the country in which she travelled and, in particular, the unfamiliarity and foreignness of the culture she encountered. Travelling widens one’s horizons says the old adage; and, it could be added, the more foreign the country visited, the wider the expansion of horizons. Access of insight is proportional to unfamiliarity: the more alien the cultural landscape the more it calls forth (‘evokes’) prejudices, and leads forth (‘educates’) greater understanding. Hegel ... declares the world and language of antiquity to be especially suitable [for the fostering of Bildung], since this world is remote and alien enough to effect the necessary separation of ourselves from ourselves.

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By ‘antiquity’ Hegel here means Greek culture, thus betraying his Eurocentric and classicist prejudices,

16

but in this present age of increasingly unimpeded

access to other cultures, the ‘ancient traditions’ are not simply those of Europe, but those of humanity as a whole. If, as Gadamer says, ‘history does not belong to us; we belong to it’, in this globalised world we belong to the history not of our own people, our tribe, but of all peoples on planet Earth. It is not long since international architecture claimed to speak the architectural language of the world. Even if now clothed in other guises, this form of prejudice is still deeply ingrained in architectural discourse. This hardening of horizons is not so much a form of xenophobia, a fear of the foreign, as an inability to imagine the existence, let alone the relevance, of other ways of thinking. How can dialogue begin if it is taken for granted that one’s own way of thinking automatically excludes every alternative? The counter to this chauvinism is an excursion into other architectural traditions, preferably those most remote from the one in which we feel at home. We can venture beyond the home horizon, not in order to increase our general knowledge of architecture or to build up a store of aesthetic forms to be drawn upon in the design studio, but to keep alive an awareness that there are types of architectural understanding other than the home-grown variety. Technologies of travel and information have increased ease of access to alien traditions and histories. Offered this smorgasbord, which alien tradition or history does one choose to study? The operative word in this question is ‘choose’; it is a matter of choice, of judgement, and thus of

phronesis. One already understands the answer to questions like this, if guided by one’s better judgement. As a rule-of-thumb, however, the very degree of strangeness, even the seeming grotesqueness of a culture, would 252

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be criterion enough for choosing it. The more estranged the architecture may seem, the better it serves to stir up the sediments of prejudice.

Fifth way station – metaphor Metaphor as excursion and return Metaphor opens up a way of going out to the architecture of the other. This is to see our architecture, the architecture with which we are familiar, the architecture coming out of the Western tradition, as the architecture of some other culture. This is not simply comparing one with the other, as in a simile, when we say that one thing is like something else. This latter is the form of trope employed, for example, when Walter Gropius or Bruno Taut compared modern architecture with traditional Japanese architecture, citing similarities in their honest expression of structure, in their simplicity, eschewal of ornament, 17

and so on.

Metaphor, by contrast, reveals qualities that are unfamiliar in both terms of the trope. For example, to see the excessive stepping of the Sydney Opera House podium as ma, the ambiguous between-space found in Japanese architecture, is to set up a circular transference of notions: just as

ma in Japan is a between-space in which human activities happen, and simultaneously an interval between events in time, such as a pause between the notes played on a flute or between the actions of an actor, so the steps of the Opera House, understood as ma, are the inter-space between the inner and the outer; and an interval in the movement from the outside world of the everyday to the special world of opera. The steps have the ambiguity of meaning that ma has: they are used for ascending and descending; for the meeting and seating of large groups; for the photographing of small groups; and so on, serving undefined and overlapping functions. They are not simply steps, but form a between-space in which events happen of their own accord (sono mama). In this example, unlike the previous comparison of modern and Japanese architectures, both terms of the metaphor remain distinct, but acquire added meaning. One term is not simply subsumed within or appropriated by the other, but adds meaning to the other, and in turn has its meaning enlarged. The power of the metaphor to change our preconceptions and enlarge our horizon of understanding is strengthened to the degree that we understand the meanings associated with each of the terms. If we understand that ma is not simply a word for ‘space’, but has rich connotations in Japanese philosophy, relates directly to Buddhist concepts of emptiness and no-mind, and is a fundamental concept governing all the Japanese arts, from 253

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architecture and Nô drama to music, then these meanings are added to those we associate with the Opera House. On the other hand, the metaphor adds, even if peripherally, to the Japanese notion of ma if it is known that there are Western examples of architecture that display the workings of the concept, 18

even if the designers are unaware of it.

This is not to ‘Nipponify’ the Sydney

Opera House, or Westernise the Japanese concept of ma, but to bring out previously undisclosed meanings in each. Metaphor is not an assimilation, identification, comparison, appropriation or expropriation, but a fusion of horizons. The pursuit of architectural tradition is to indicate metaphors of this type, and then to ‘fill in’ the background, signalling the wealth of meaning associated with the alien concept. This is to translate tradition. If the study of tradition is to be relevant in other ways than instilling and reinforcing the culture of Western architectural celebrity, it must ask the question, ‘How does such-and-such translate into our present situation?’ The pursuit of teaching of history is a lesson in translation, and translation is not a transformation of the thought of the other so as to make it an imitation or reflection of one’s own, nor is it a taking possession. It is, rather, a fusion, in which the understanding of the foreign comes home.

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Architecture as interpretation

Figure caption 1

Sculpture Court, Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Coda

Architecture as interpretation: design as disclosure Design is interpretive, not least in the play of making. The traditional potter allows the pot to disclose itself in its creation. The pot is not pre-thought and

then made, but made in the making. The potter does not manipulate an object, but becomes one with the materials and the movements involved in its making, and the making continues even after it has left the hands of the potter, as the characteristics of the materials further reveal themselves. Design can be similarly thought of as a disclosing of the artefact that is being designed. From the insights of hermeneutics design is also an unfolding of self-understanding, since it reveals one’s pre-understandings. It uncovers the preconceptions that are constitutive of the design outcome, and at the same time brings to light the prejudices that make up what we are. The design process is thus edification. It builds up the artefact and edifies the designer. To encounter something other or unexpected, we are reminded of what we were anticipating. Next time we might expect something different, or adapt the circumstances to accommodate revised expectations. Our relationships within the world are revised. In defusing the mysteries of a special creative apparatus, based in logic, genius, objectivity or subjectivity, we see that the condition of being-inthe-world already implicates thought. In the sense developed by Heidegger, Gadamer and others, thought is in the world and of the world, and we participate from time to time to claim some of it as our own. For Vijñânavâda Buddhism, consciousness is neither ‘inside’ nor ‘outside’. It is ‘nowhere’ and it is everywhere. What seem to be ‘inside’ and ‘outside’, subject and objects, merge in a mode of praxis that includes them both. Our engagement here with other traditions provides an alliance against the dominant objectivism of 257

Coda

the professional sphere, and lends support to the hermeneutical thesis, and that of scholars exploring its implications. This encounter with other traditions also contributes to the circle of understanding by exposing and bringing to presence our preconceptions, which in turn influence how we regard the other. Design is similarly animated by such encounters. Encountering the other invariably presents as an engagement with aporias. Design is agonistic, the way is rocky, the journey moves to uncharted and hostile territory. Differences as well as similarities are brought to light. Design presents itself as so many interventions into the environment. Thought is provoked anew, or set on a different course, when a drawing or model is produced, concrete cast, a new building appears, a sign is erected, or something is removed, excavated or defiled. By this reading we don’t think to produce designs, but design interventions in the environment provoke thought and are constitutive of thought. In this book we have operated the hermeneutical apparatus at high volume in so far as it relates to architecture and design, scrutinising its implications and importance, and tuning its resistance against prevalent systems of thought, in history, cognition, psychology, language study, computation and design theory. Design provides an exacting case for hermeneutics, which affirms unequivocally that design is a way of interpretive thinking.

258

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Notes

Preface 1

See R. Coyne, Designing Information Technology in the Postmodern Age: From Method to Metaphor, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995; R. Coyne, Technoromanticism: Digital Narrative, Holism, and the Romance of the Real, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999; and R. Coyne, Cornucopia Limited: Design and Dissent on the Internet, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005.

Introduction: Architecture and coherence 1

S. Sontag, Against Interpretation, London: Vintage, 1961, p. 7. Albrecht provides an architectural interpretation of this theme, though couched in terms of a conservative view of hermeneutics. See J. Albrecht, ‘Against the interpretation of architecture’, Journal of Architectural Education, 55: 3, 2002, 194–196.

2

Sontag, Against Interpretation, p. 7.

3

J.P. Bonta, Architecture and its Interpretation: A Study of Expressive Systems in Architecture, London: Lund Humphries, 1979, p. 226.

4

B. Colomina, ‘Introduction: On Architecture, Production and Reproduction’, in B. Colomina (ed.), Architectureproduction, New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1988, 6–23, p. 7.

5 6

Ibid. This point is made by Gadamer, not in connection with design, but regarding poetic composition and its interpretation. See H.-G. Gadamer, The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays, trans. N. Walker, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986, pp. 66–73.

7

This role of interpretation is reported approvingly by Giedion, Harries, and Norberg-Schultz. See S. Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1962; K. Harries, The Ethical Function of Architecture, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1997; and C. Norberg-Schulz, Principles of Modern Architecture, London: Andreas Papadakis, 2000.

8

D. Watkin, Morality and Architecture Revisited, Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press,

9

See D. Watkin, Morality and Architecture: The Development of a Theme in Architectural

2001, p. 115. History and Theory in the Gothic Revival to the Modern Movement, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977; and K.R. Popper, The Poverty of Historicism, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957. Whyte discusses Watkin’s position in his introduction to Modernism and the Spirit of the City. See I.B. Whyte, ‘Introduction’, in I.B. Whyte (ed.), Modernism and the Spirit of the City, London: Routledge, 2003, pp. 1–31. 10 Whyte, ‘Introduction’. 11

The extensive history of the movement is provided by Gadamer. See H.-G. Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. J. Weinsheimer and D.G. Marshall, New York: Continuum, 2004.

12 The study of how scholars deal with history is referred to as historiography. History is simply the stories that are told by historians, though sometimes this includes the history of history telling and the history of theories about history. History and historiography coalesce.

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See H. White, Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978. Hermeneutics contributes to historiography. 13 See F. Schleiermacher and A. Bowie (ed.), Hermeneutics and Criticism: And Other Writings, trans. A. Bowie, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. 14 Ibid., p. 228. 15 A. Colquhoun, Modernity and the Classical Tradition: Architectural Essays 1980–1987, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1989. 16 M.-A. Laugier, An Essay on Architecture, trans. W. Herrmann and A. Herrmann, Los Angeles, Ca.: Hennessey and Ingalls, 1977. 17 See Colquhoun, Modernity and the Classical Tradition: Architectural Essays 1980–1987. The twentieth-century architectural historian Alan Colquhoun describes this interest in history as emerging from the Romantic movement, and its questioning of the neoclassicism that dominated the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. For further accounts of the role of the architectural treatise and developments in architectural theory see C. Thoenes, ‘Introduction’, in B. Evers and C. Thoenes (eds), Architectural Theory: From the Renaissance to the Present, Köln: Taschen, 2003, pp. 8–19, and A. Tzonis, ‘The structure of change: co-revolutions, roots and emergence of modern architecture’, in L. Lefaivre and A. Tzonis (eds), The Emergence of Modern Architecture: A Documentary History From 1000 to 1810, London: Routledge, 2002, pp. 1–28. 18 Gadamer provides an extensive and nuanced account of these approaches to history. See Gadamer, Truth and Method, pp. 175–267. 19 Colquhoun, Modernity and the Classical Tradition: Architectural Essays 1980–1987, p. 6. 20 See H.d. Saint-Simon, Social Organization, The Science of Man and Other Writings, trans. F. Markham, New York: Harper and Row, 1964, and A. Comte and S. Andreski (eds), The Essential Comte, trans. M. Clarke, London: Croom Helm, 1974. Note that French positivism predates and differs in many respects from twentieth-century positivism, which we address in Chapter 1. 21 See M. Hvattum, Gottfried Semper and the Problem of Historicism, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 22 Ibid., p. 166. 23 Gadamer, Truth and Method, pp. 214–235. White, Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism. 24 Harries, The Ethical Function of Architecture, p. 11. He attributes this statement to Sigfried Giedion. See Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition. 25 Norberg-Schulz, Principles of Modern Architecture, p. 9. 26 Ibid. Also see C. Norberg-Schulz, Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture, New York: Rizzoli, 1980. 27 C. Norberg-Schulz, Intentions in Architecture, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1965, p. 209. 28 Norberg-Schulz, Principles of Modern Architecture, p. 20. 29 It seems that architectural historiography was more strongly influenced by the emerging historicism of Herder and Hegel, than the meta-theorising of Schleiermacher. 30 Schleiermacher and Bowie (ed.), Hermeneutics and Criticism: And Other Writings, p. 228. 31 Ibid. 32 See Gadamer’s decription of Dilthey’s hermeneutics. Dilthey writes of interpretation involving a recognition of ‘structural continuity’, from which derives a sense of ‘significance’. See Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 220. 33 The architectural tradition is closest to contemporary hermeneutics when it speaks of the application of rules, sound judgements, and the workings of praxis and practical reason, as when the Baroque architect, Guarini, appeals to the need for ‘learned judgement’ and a ‘judicious eye’, in the application of rules about proportion (Guarini, Civil Architecture, excerpted in L. Lefaivre and A. Tzonis, The Emergence of Modern Architecture:

260

Notes

A Documentary History From 1000 to 1810, London: Routledge, 2002, p. 227). The architectural canon makes only passing reference to such hermeneutical insights. We focus on interpretation as application and practical reason in the chapters that follow. 34 Gadamer, The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays, p. 68. 35 F. de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, trans. R. Harris, London: Duckworth, 1983, p. 118. 36 Ibid., p. 121. 37 Ibid., p. 122. This is further explicated by Geoffrey Broadbent in G. Broadbent, ‘Meaning into architecture’, in C. Jencks and G. Baird (eds), Meaning in Architecture, London: Barrie & Rockliff, 1969, pp. 50–75. 38 For an account of Saussure’s language theory and its implications see F. Jameson, The Prison-House of Language: A Critical Account of Structuralism and Russian Formalism, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972. 39 P. Vitruvius and M.H. Morgan, Vitruvius: The Ten Books on Architecture, trans. M.H. Morgan, New York: Dover Publications, 1960, p. 26. See A.B. Snodgrass, Architecture, Time and Eternity: Studies in the Stellar and Temporal Symbolism of Traditional Buildings, Volumes I and II, New Delhi, India: Aditya Prakashan, 1990, and L. Jones, The Hermeneutics of Sacred Architecture: Experience, Interpretation, Comparison; Volume Two: Hermeneutical Calisthenics: A Morphology of Ritual-Architectural Priorities, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000. 40 It is interpretation devoid of contingency, a distinctly ‘pre-modern’ understanding, which requires a discussion of symbol for us to do it justice. It does not yet come close to Schleiermacher’s hermeneutics, for whom ‘The totality of understanding is always a collective work’ (Schleiermacher and Bowie (ed.), Hermeneutics and Criticism: And Other Writings, p. 267), or to Saussure, for whom meaning is decided by a language community. At another extreme, the positioning that is a free and open interpretation is more a process of finding a place, a nomadic exercise of journeys and excursions. According to the Oxford Companion to the Mind, from the ‘gnomon’ derives the word ‘cognition’. See R.L. Gregory (ed.) and O.L. Zangwill, The Oxford Companion to the Mind, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987, p. 149. 41 Harries, The Ethical Function of Architecture, p. 264. 42 Ibid., p. 365. 43 I. McEwen, Vitruvius: Writing the Body of Architecture, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003. 44 H.-G. Gadamer and R.E. Palmer (eds), Gadamer in Conversation: Reflections and Commentary, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001, p. 98. Deleuze and Guattari also draw on stoical insights in their influential books on organicism and contemporary culture. See G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, New York: Viking Press, 1977, and G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. B. Massumi, London: Athlone Press, 1988. 45 As just one example, see D. Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order, New York: Routledge, 2002. 46 M. Aurelius, Meditations, trans. M. Staniforth, London: Penguin, 1964, p. 73. 47 A. Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1984, p. 276. 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid. 50 F.W. James, ‘The one and the many’, in G. Gunn (ed.), William James: Pragmatism and Other Writings, London: Penguin, 2000, 58–73, p. 59. 51 Vitruvius and Morgan, Vitruvius: The Ten Books on Architecture, p. 73. 52 McEwen, Vitruvius: Writing the Body of Architecture, pp. 55, 56. 53 Ibid., p. 57.

261

Notes

54 Vitruvius and Morgan, Vitruvius: The Ten Books on Architecture, p. 14. 55 Plato, ‘Phaedrus’, in J.M. Cooper (ed.), Complete Works, Indianapolis, Ill.: Hackett, 1997, 506–556, p. 541. 56 Plato, ‘Cratylus’, in J.M. Cooper (ed.), Complete Works, Indianapolis, Ill.: Hackett, 1997, 101–156, pp. 408a, 126. Plato says in the ellipsis that Hermes is ‘a thief and a deceiver in words’, an insight which points to a ‘radical hermeneutics’ to be discussed in Chapter 4. 57 McEwen, Vitruvius: Writing the Body of Architecture, p. 66. 58 Schleiermacher and Bowie (ed.), Hermeneutics and Criticism: And Other Writings, p. 231. 59 Ibid., p. 236. 60 M. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1962. 61 Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 293. 62 Vitruvius and Morgan, Vitruvius: The Ten Books on Architecture, p. 14. 63 Ibid., p. 72. 64 R. Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism, Chichester: Academy Editions, 1998, p. 31. 65 L.B. Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books, trans. J. Rykwert, N. Leach and R. Tavernor, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996, p. 7. 66 Ibid., p. 423. 67 Ibid., p. 7. 68 Ibid. 69 Ibid., p. 23. 70 Ibid., p. 7. 71 Aristotle, The Ethics of Aristotle: The Nicomachean Ethics, trans. J.A.K. Thomson, London: Penguin, 1976, p. 101. 72 A. Palladio, The Four Books of Architecture, New York: Dover, 1965, p. 1. 73 See Plato, The Republic of Plato, trans. F.M. Cornford, London: Oxford University Press, 1941, pp. 331, 332. Padovan provides a helpful introduction to Plato’s theory of copying in the context of design. See R. Padovan, Proportion: Science, Philosophy, Architecture, London: Spon, 1999, pp. 99–105. 74

Hvattum, Gottfried Semper and the Problem of Historicism, pp. 76, 77. Also see Plato, ‘Timaeus’, in J.M. Cooper (ed.), Complete Works, Indianapolis, Ill.: Hackett, 1997, 1224–1291, p. 1235.

75 Hvattum, Gottfried Semper and the Problem of Historicism, p. 77. Hvattum links this to adherence to Aristotle’s Poetics. Whereas the neoclassicists were interested in art imitating nature, for Aristotle, art imitates practice. 76 G.W. Leibniz, ‘Monadology’, Philosophical Texts, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998, 268–281, p. 272. 77 Laugier, An Essay on Architecture, p. 4. 78 Ibid., pp. 3, 4. 79 Ibid., p. 12. 80 References to practical reason, judgement, praxis and phronesis in the architectural canon also anticipate contemporary hermeneutics. According to an illuminating article by Susan Stewart, Vitruvius’ reference to the threefold function of architecture in firmness (firmitas), commodity, and delight, makes reference to interpretation as practical reason, at least as interpreted in the seventeenth century by Henry Wotton. Commodity (utilitas) and delight (venustas) parallel the two aspects of the soul, pertaining to the dialectic between intellect and will. Delight is not just beauty, but the ecstatic state achieved when the soul realises its home in the Ideas, when it attains the good. Commodity is not merely function, but the form of justice, perhaps the rule of law. The third term that emerges from the dialectic is firmness, which is not just structure, but moral resolve, holding on to what is right. But for

262

Notes

the Aristotelian in Wotton, this resolve is practical reason, and, anticipating Gadamer, it is in fact the dialectic itself, the hermeneutical to and fro movement within a context, from which derive understanding and judgement. Vitruvius hints at this interpretational aspect of firmitas. Firmness is not just ‘carrying down the foundations to a good solid bottom’, but ‘making a proper choice of materials without parsimony’. It is making sound judgement. Stewart’s explanation helps place Vitruvius within the wider Platonic/Aristotelian discourse. See S. Stewart, ‘Gathering, disposing and the cultivation of judgement in Sir Henry Wotton’s The Elements of Architecture’, Architectural Theory Review, 6: 2, 2001, 81–94. 81 Hvattum, Gottfried Semper and the Problem of Historicism, p. 166. 82 Ibid. 83 Ibid. 84 Ibid. 85 Ibid., p. 167. 86 Ibid. 87 J.-N.-L. Durand, Précis of the Lectures on Architecture, trans. D. Britt, Los Angeles, Ca.: Getty Research Institute, 2000, p. 31. 88 Ibid., p. 88. 89 Ibid., p. 78. 90 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc and M.F. Hearn (eds), The Architectural Theory of Viollet-le-Duc: Readings and Commentary, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990, p. 198. 91 Ibid., p. 142. 92 Norberg-Schulz, Intentions in Architecture, p. 78. 93 Ibid., p. 217. 94 Ibid., p. 222. 95 Ibid., p. 78. 96 C. Alexander, S. Ishikawa and M. Silverstein, A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction, New York: Oxford University Press, 1977, p. xiii. 97 S. Groak, The Idea of Building: Thought and Action in the Design and Production of Buildings, London: Spon, 1992, p. 3. 98 R. Rogers and P. Gumuchdjian, Cities for a Small Planet, London: Faber and Faber, 1997, p. 155. 99 Ibid., p. 153. 100 Harries, The Ethical Function of Architecture, p. 12. 101 Ibid., p. 11. He attributes this statement to Sigfried Giedion. See Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition. 102 Harries, The Ethical Function of Architecture, p. 264. 103 Ibid. 104 R. Mugerauer, Interpretations on Behalf of Place: Environmental Displacements and Alternative Responses, Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1994, p. 184. 105 Ibid. 106 Ibid. 107 D. Vesely, Architecture in the Age of Divided Representation: The Question of Creativity in the Shadow of Production, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2004, p. 382. 108 Gadamer, The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays, p. 14. 109 Ibid., p. 49. 110 Ibid. 111 Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 387. 112 Ibid., p. 293. 113 L. Jones, The Hermeneutics of Sacred Architecture: Experience, Interpretation, Comparison; Volume Two: Hermeneutical Calisthenics: A Morphology of Ritual-Architectural Priorities, p. 263. 114 Ibid.

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115 R. Connah, Writing Architecture: Fantãomas Fragments Fictions: An Architectural Journey Through the Twentieth Century, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1989, p. 31. 116 Vesely, Architecture in the Age of Divided Representation: The Question of Creativity in the Shadow of Production, p. 334. 117 Ibid., p. 335. 118 Gadamer discusses the fragment in relation to the symbol, understood as a partial token, that promises to bring to completeness. See Gadamer, The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays, p. 32 119 Vesely, Architecture in the Age of Divided Representation: The Question of Creativity in the Shadow of Production, p. 337. 120 Ibid. 121 See A. Breton, Manifestoes of surrealism, Ann Arbor,: University of Michigan Press, 1969. 122 See White, Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism; M. Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, New York: Random House, 1970; and R. Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. 123 For White, ‘the sciences of life, labor, and language of the nineteenth century proceed on the basis of the discovery of the functional differentiation of parts within the totality and in the apprehension of the mode of Succession as the modality of the relationship between entities on the one side and among different parts of any single entity on the other. But this “grasping together” of the parts of a thing as aspects of a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts, this ascription of wholeness and organic unity to a congeries of elements in a system, is precisely the modality of relationships that is given in language by the trope of synecdoche. This trope is the equivalent in poetic usage of the relationship presumed to exist among things by those philosophers who speak about microcosm–macrocosm relationships.’ White, Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism, p. 254. 124 J. Baudrillard, ‘Simulacra and Simulations’, in M. Poster (ed.), Selected Writings, Cambridge: Polity, 2001, 169–187. 125 G. Deleuze, The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque, trans. T. Conley, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1993. 126 Leibniz, ‘Monadology’, p. 275. 127 Deleuze, The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque, p. 125. In similar vein, Gadamer sees the baroque as a period of allegory (Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 68). For White (White, Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism, p. 252) and Vesely (Vesely, Architecture in the Age of Divided Representation: The Question of Creativity in the Shadow of Production, pp. 214, 215) it is the period of metaphor. 128 G. Guarini, Civil Architecture, excerpted in Lefaivre and Tzonis, The Emergence of Modern Architecture: A Documentary History From 1000 to 1810, pp. 226–229. 129 Deleuze, The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque, p. 77. 130 White, Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism, p. 233. 131 Ibid. 132 Ibid., p. 234. 133 B. Tschumi, The Manhattan Transcripts, London: Academy Editions, 1994, p. 7. 134 Ibid., p. 8. 135 Ibid. 136 See for example: Connah, Writing Architecture: Fantãomas Fragments Fictions: An Architectural Journey Through the Twentieth Century; B. Tschumi, Architecture and Disjunction, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994; J. Hill (ed), Architecture: The Subject is Matter, London: Routledge, 2001; M. Dorrian and A. Hawker, Metis: Urban Cartographies, London: Black Dog, 2002; M. Dorrian and A. Hawker, ‘The tortoise, the scorpion and the

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horse – partial notes on architectural research/teaching/practice’, Journal of Architecture, 8, 2003, 179–186; R. Koolhaas, Content, Köln: Taschen, 2004. 137 See S. Zizek, The Indivisible Remainder: An Essay On Schelling And Related Matters, London: Verso Books, 1996. 138 Schleiermacher and Bowie (ed.), Hermeneutics and Criticism: And Other Writings, p. 240. 139 See for example R. Williams, The Anxious City: English Urbanism in the Late Twentieth Century, London: Routledge, 2004.

Part 1: Play 1

We first examined some of the propositions of this section in a series of articles: A.B. Snodgrass and R.D. Coyne, ‘Is designing hermeneutical?’ Architectural Theory Review, 2: 1, 1997, 65–97; A. Snodgrass, ‘Hermeneutics and the application of design rules’, Proceedings of the Conference Gadamer: Action and Reason, Sydney: Department of Architecture, The University of Sydney, 30 September–1 October 1991, 1991, 1–11; R. Coyne and A. Snodgrass, ‘Is designing mysterious? Challenging the dual knowledge thesis’, Design Studies, 12: 3, 1991, 124–131; and R. Coyne, ‘Creativity as commonplace’, Design Studies, 18: 2, 1997, 135–141.

2

D.A. Schön, The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action, London: Temple

3

H. Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1969.

4

AHRB, AHRB Strategic Plan 2004–2009, Bristol: The Arts and Humanities Research Board,

5

J. Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture, Boston: Beacon Press,

Smith, 1983.

2004, pp. 15, 16. 1955, p. 1.

1 Architectural hermeneutics 1

An expansion of this question reads ‘Is design science hermeneutical?’ which mirrors the question posed by theorists of interpretation: ‘Are the human sciences (Geisteswissenschaften) hermeneutical?’ See P. Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.

2

See G. Stiny, ‘Introduction to Shape and Shape Grammars’, Environment and Planning B, 7, 1980, 342–351; T.W. Knight, Transformations in Design: A Formal Approach to Stylistic Change and Innovation in the Visual Arts, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994; W.J. Mitchell, The Logic of Architecture, Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1990; R.D. Coyne, M. A. Rosenman, A. D. Radford, M. Balachandran and J. S. Gero, Knowledge-Based Design Systems, Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1990; R.D. Coyne, Logic Models of Design, London: Pitman, 1988, and Y.E. Kalay, Architecture’s New Media: Principles, Theories, and Methods of Computer-Aided Design, London: MIT Press, 2004. A. Bijl, Computer Discipline and Design Practice: Shaping Our Future, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1989, expresses unease and ambivalence, prevalent within the CAD research community, about all-embracing computational models of design. The computer scientists and linguists, T. Winograd and F. Flores, Understanding Computers and Cognition, Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1986, give a stimulating critique of the algorithmic logic model. Also see alternatives to method offered in P. Ehn, Work-Oriented Design of Computer Artifacts, Stockholm: Arbetslivscentrum, 1988, and Coyne, Designing Information Technology in the Postmodern Age: From Method to Metaphor, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995.

3

Mitchell, The Logic of Architecture.

4

Ibid., p. ix–x.

5

Ibid., p. x.

6

Ibid., p. 39.

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Notes

7

Plato, Seventh Letter 342 E 4.

8

Plato, Cratylus, passim. Cf. G.L. Bruns, ‘On the Weakness of Language in the Human Sciences’, in J.S. Nelson, A. Megill and D.A. McCloskey (eds), The Rhetoric of the Human Sciences: Language and Argument in Scholarship and Public Affairs, Madison, Wisconsin: University of Winsconsin Press, 1987.

9

H.-G. Gadamer, Truth and Method, London: Sheed and Ward, 1975, p. 373.

10 J. Mendelson, ‘The Habermas-Gadamer Debate’, New German Critique, 18, 1979, 44–73, p. 49. 11

L. Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. D.F. Pears and B.F. McGuiness, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961.

12 The quotes are taken from B. Gross, Analytic Philosophy, New York: Pegasus, 1970, p. 143, where he lists the basic assumptions of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. Cf. P.C. Smith, ‘Gadamer’s Hermeneutics and Ordinary Language Philosophy’, Thomist, 43, 1979, 296–321, p. 300. 13 Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, § 5.6. 14 L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe, New York: Macmillan, 1961, § 18. 15 Ibid., § 23. 16 S. Cavell, Must We Mean What We Say?, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1969, p. 52. 17 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, p. 227. 18 H.L. Dreyfus, What Computers Can’t Do: The Limits of Artificial Intelligence, New York: Harper and Row, 1979, p. 203. 19 J.L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962, p. 145. 20 The following analysis of hermeneutics derives mainly from Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer. See Heidegger, Being and Time; Gadamer, Truth and Method; H.-G. Gadamer, Reason in the Age of Science, trans. F.G. Lawrence, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1981; H.-G. Gadamer, Philosophical Hermeneutics, trans. D.E. Linge, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976; H.-G. Gadamer, ‘The Problem of Historical Consciousness’, in P. Rabinow and W.M. Sullivan (eds), Interpretive Social Science – A Second Look, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979, 82–140; H.-G. Gadamer, ‘Hermeneutics and Social Science’, Cultural Hermeneutics, 2, 1975, 307–316; and H.G. Gadamer, ‘The Universality of the Hermeneutical Problem’, in G. Ormiston and A.D. Schrift (eds), The Hermeneutic Tradition: From Ast to Ricoeur, Albany: State University of New York, 1990, 147–158. There is a large literature commenting on and expanding the findings of these two philosophers. See the bibliography in Ormiston and Schrift. We have also relied heavily on G. Warnke, Gadamer, Hermeneutics, Tradition and Reason, London: Polity Press, 1987; J.C. Weinsheimer, Gadamer’s Hermeneutics: A Reading of Truth and Method, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985; J.C. Weinsheimer, Philosophical Hermeneutics and Literary Theory, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1991; R.J. Palmer, Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory in Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger and Gadamer, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1969; D. Misgeld, ‘On Gadamer’s Hermeneutics’, Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 9: 2, 1979, 221–239; D.E. Linge, ‘Introduction’, Gadamer, Philosophical Hermeneutics, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976, i–Ii; R.J. Howard, Three Faces of Hermeneutics: An Introduction to Current Theories of Understanding, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982; J.S. Hans, ‘Hermeneutics, Play, Deconstruction’, Philosophy Today, 24, 1980, 297–316; J.S. Hans, ‘Hans-Georg Gadamer and Hermeneutic Phenomenology’, Philosophy Today, 22, 1978, 3–19; K. Dockhorn, ‘Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Truth and Method’, Philosophy and Rhetoric, 13: 3, 1980, 160–180; J. Risser, Hermeneutics and the Voice of the Other: Rereading Gadamer’s Philosophical Hermeneutics, New York: State University of New York, 1997; L. Langsdorf and S.H. Watson, Phenomenology, Interpretation, and

266

Notes

Community. New York: State University of New York, 1996; J. Grondin, Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics, trans. N. Weinsheimer, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994. 21 Gadamer (Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 269) defines ‘horizon’ as follows: ‘Every finite present has its limitations. We define the concept of "situation" by saying that it represents a standpoint that limits the possibility of vision. Hence an essential part of the concept of situation is the concept of "horizon". The horizon is the range of vision that includes everything that can be seen from a particular vantage point.’ When we use the terms ‘horizon’ and design ‘situation’ in the following, we are using them in the sense in which Gadamer here defines them. 22 Ibid., p. 236. 23 J. Habermas, ‘A Review of Gadamer’s Truth and Method’, in F.R. Dallmayr and T.A. McCarthy (eds), Understanding and Social Inquiry, Notre Dame and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977, 335–363, p. 350. 24 Heidegger, Being and Time, ¶31–33 (pp. 182–203). Heidegger terms these three forestructures ‘fore-having’ (Vorhabe), ‘fore-sight’ or ‘fore-seeing’ (Vorsicht), and ‘foreconception’ or ‘fore-hypothesis’ (Vorgriff). Vorhabe includes all the culturally acquired skills and practices we employ in acts of interpretation; these cultural practices are constitutive of our being, and thus determine what we find intelligible. Vorsicht includes all the resources of a common descriptive language, the vocabulary or conceptual scheme we bring to the act of interpretation, and which determines what we count as real and what are relevant aspects of what we interpret. Vorgriff is a hypothesis we have concerning the thing being interpreted; it is the ‘conceptual reservoir’ that we hold in advance and bring to the interpretive act. See Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 193; Warnke, Gadarner, Hermeneutics, Tradition and Reason, p. 77 ff.; P.A. Heelan, Space-Perception and the Philosophy of Science, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983, p. 220 ff.; P.A. Heelan, ‘Perception as a Hermeneutical Act’, Review of Metaphysics, 37, 1983, 61–75, p. 69 ff.; Winograd and Flores, Understanding Computers and Cognition, p. 15 ff. 25 Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 236. 26 This concept of understanding as metaphoric comes from Heidegger, Being and Time, ¶33, pp. 195–203 and cf. p. 410. Heelan, Space-Perception and the Philosophy of Science, develops the Heideggerian concepts as they relate to perception. 27 Heidegger, Being and Time, pp. 190, 191. 28 Ibid., pp. 191, 192. 29 The nature of experience involves notions of skill, tacit understanding and what Gadamer calls ‘effective-historical consciousness’. 30 These pre-understandings derive in large part from the tradition – both cultural and professional – in which the practitioner operates. See G. Buck, ‘The Structure of Hermeneutic Experience and the Problem of Tradition’, New Literary History, 10: 1, 1978, 31–47. 31 Studies in this dissenting mode include E.D.J. Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1967; C. Altieri, ‘The Hermeneutics of Literary Indeterminacy: A Dissent from the New Orthodoxy’, New Literary History, 10: 1, 1978, 71–100; A. Savile, ‘Historicity and the Hermeneutic Circle’, New Literary History, 10: 1, 1978, 49–70; P. Szondi, ‘Introduction to Literary Hermeneutics’, New Literary History, 10: 1, 1978, 17–30. 32 To label this as ‘relativism’ is merely to pander to untenable positivist notions of ‘objectivity’. See C. Taylor, ‘Interpretation and the Sciences of Man’, Review of Metaphysics, 25, 1971, 3–34, (repr. in F.R. Dallmayr and T.A. McCarthy, Understanding and Social Inquiry. Notre Dame and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977, pp. 101–130; and in P. Rabinow and W.M. Sullivan, Interpretive Social Science: A Second Look, Berkeley:

267

Notes

University of California Press, 1979, pp. 33–81). Cf. R.J. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983, pp. 133, 134 and passim. 33 Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 237. 34 Ibid. 35 The phrase is from P. Ricoeur, ‘Ethics and Culture – Habermas and Gadamer in Dialogue’, Philosophy Today: 17, 1973, 153–165.Cf. Rabinow and Sullivan, Interpretive Social Science: A Second Look, p. 15. 36 Gadamer, Truth and Method, could be described as a series of such metaphors. 37 Ibid., p. 347. 38 Ibid., p. 345. 39 Play is another of the metaphors that Gadamer uses to provide insights into the nature of the workings of the hermeneutical enterprise. 40 Gadamer, Philosophical Hermeneutics, p. 66. 41 Ibid., p. 338. 42 Ibid., p. 344. Cf. T. Peters, ‘The Nature and Role of Presupposition: An Inquiry into Contemporary Hermeneutics’, International Philosophical Review, 19: 2, 1974, 209–222, p. 217. 43 On the fusion of horizons see E. Garrett, ‘Hans-Georg Gadamer and the ‘Fusion of Horizons’’, Man and World, 7, 1978, 392–400, and B. Lonergan, ‘Merging Horizons: System, Common Sense, Scholarship’, Cultural Hermeneutics, 1, 1973, 87–99. 44 Cf. Peters, ‘The Nature and Role of Presupposition: An Inquiry into Contemporary Hermeneutics’. 45 Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 349. 46 Cf. J. Hogan, ‘Gadamer and the Hermeneutical Experience’, Philosophy Today, 20, 1976, 3–12. 47 Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 329. 48 Cf. A. MacIntyre, ‘Contexts and Interpretation: Reflections on Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Truth and Method’, Boston University Journal, 26: 1980, 173–76. 49 The application of the hermeneutical circle to life experience (Erlebnis) is a pivotal concept in the philosophy of Dilthey. Cf. Warnke, Gadarner, Hermeneutics, Tradition and Reason, p. 26 ff. 50 Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 230. 51 D.A. Schön, The Reflective Practitioner – How Professionals Think in Action, New York: Basic Books, 1983. Schön’s studies are a sound base for research into the hermeneutical nature of the design process. Cf. P.G. Rowe, Design Thinking, Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1987. 52 Schön, The Reflective Practitioner – How Professionals Think in Action, p. 78 ff. 53 The phrase comes from Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, p. 95, where he is speaking of the hermeneutical process in general. 54 The associations are reflected in etymologies. We speak of the design ‘project’, which word literally means a ‘throwing before’. ‘Project’ is used to translate Heidegger’s Entwurf, which means ‘throwing something off or away from one’, with a stronger sense of ‘throwing’ than has the English equivalent. In its common usage, however, Entwurf means ‘designing’ or ‘sketching’ some intended ‘project’. It is also used in the sense of ‘projection’ as when we say that a geometer ‘projects’ a circle onto a plane surface. See G. Ormiston and A.D. Schrift, The Hermeneutic Tradition: From Ast to Ricoeur, Albany: State University of New York, 1990, p. 130, fn. 136. 55 This is one of the characteristics of the ‘wicked problems’ that at one time exercised design methodologists. See R. Coyne, ‘Wicked problems revisited’, Design Studies, 26: 1, 2005, 5–17. 56 Cf. M. Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy, Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1958, p. 126 ff. Aspects of Polanyi’s thinking, working from an epistemological base, show remarkable parallels with hermeneutics.

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Notes

57 This is obviously merely an outline of what is a complex procedure. The design develops both verbally and by way of images; and there is an involvement of the body as well as the intellect. 58 We consider the term ‘project’ to be more appropriate to describe the design task and its goal than is the word ‘problem’, which carries over connotations from mathematics and the physical sciences. To speak of the Gothic masons, for example, as having the ‘problem’ of designing Chartres is faintly ludicrous. To speak of ‘problems’ is already on the way to handing over design to scientism. On the other hand, the etymology of the word ‘problem’ itself carries associations with ‘project’. It comes from the Greek problema, -matos, from pro-ballô, ‘to throw before’, that is, ‘fore-throwing’. 59 We are here in the realm of metaphor, where the literal or true/false statement is alien. The metaphor of dialogue, the back-and-forth of question and answer, is a metaphor for a process that might or might not be conscious, and might or might not be verbal. For the designer, the visualisation of forms in the imagination can be as evocative as any question articulated verbally. 60 The dialogue is multi-faceted, with a multitude of questioners and answerers. The conditions of the site, the brief, and all the other factors have their questions and their answers. It is not intended here to go into specifics. 61 The ‘unconscious’ here is not to be confused with the unconscious of psychoanalysis. Unlike the contents of the psychoanalytical unconscious, what is brought into the open in the hermeneutical process has not been repressed. The disclosure is not brought about by the removal of some sort of blockage, but is, rather, the revealing of the nature of the thing, which is the resultant nexus of a historic process. 62 R. Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980, borrows the idea of Bildung and makes it central to his concepts concerning the function of philosophy. 63 Bruno Latour develops the concepts of things as speakers in a dialogue. See B. Latour, ‘Clothing the Naked World’, in H. Lawson and L. Appignanesi (eds), Dismantling Truth, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989, 101–126, p. 121 ff. 64 A tutor in the design studio performs the same translating function. 65 Models are forms of metaphors; but metaphors are not necessarily models. Metaphor is the general term for a structure that includes models. Models as defined by science have limitations that are not binding on other types of metaphor. See A. Snodgrass and R. Coyne, ‘Models, Metaphors, and the Hermeneutics of Design’, Design Issues, 9: 1, 1992, 56–74. 66 Habermas, ‘A Review of Gadamer’s Truth and Method’, p. 341. 67 Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 333. 68 Bruns, ‘On the Weakness of Language in the Human Sciences’, p. 252. 69 Compare with Weinsheimer, Gadamer’s Hermeneutics: A Reading of Truth and Method, p. 206. 70 Compare with Heelan, Space-Perception and the Philosophy of Science, p. 265. The implications for abduction still remain to be demonstrated. 71 In the same way that a primary tenet of functionalist architecture was that buildings should have the same style everywhere, whatever the local conditions. Hence the ‘international’ style. 72 This leads into some of Gadamer’s most valuable insights: the identity of understanding, interpretation and application; the working of phronesis; the identity of theory and practice; the operation of ethics in practice, etc. These considerations are developed in Chapters 5 and 6. 73 See Snodgrass and Coyne, ‘Models, Metaphors, and the Hermeneutics of Design’. 74

Palmer, Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory in Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger and Gadamer, p. 233.

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Notes

75 This theme is developed by Buck, ‘The Structure of Hermeneutic Experience and the Problem of Tradition’, p. 35. 76 Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 327. 77 We use the term ‘tacit understanding’ rather than Polanyi’s term ‘tacit knowledge’ because understanding and knowledge, as noted above, are to be distinguished. The concept of ‘tacit knowledge’ leads into a web of epistemological pre-assumptions that are irrelevant in this context. 78 Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, p. 319.

2

Playing by the rules

1

The term ‘theory’ is used in several ways. It can simply refer to a hypothesis; to a hypothesis that has accrued sufficient credibility to be generally accepted within a scientific discipline (community); or as a systematic account of some area of research, derived from a set of general propositions (as in cultural theory, critical theory and architectural history and theory). Here, contrasted with practice, it refers to a systematic explanation of some observed phenomenon, expressed as a set of laws or principles.

2

Plato’s doctrine of knowledge is summarised in the Simile of the Divided Line and the Allegory of the Cave that immediately follows it in the Republic (books vi–vii). See Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, trans. B. Jowett, London: Macmillan, 1982, pp. 773–828.

3

These postulates are scientistic rather than scientific, and would probably not be accepted as valid by most philosophers of science. Even a superficial survey of design science and CAD literature, however, shows that these concepts are still pervasive in the thinking of researchers in those fields.

4

Gadamer, Truth and Method; Gadamer, Reason in the Age of Science.

5

Gadamer, Truth and Method, pp. 289–305.

6

Weinsheimer, Gadamer’s Hermeneutics: A Reading of Truth and Method, p. 184 ff.

7

Gadamer, Truth and Method, pp. 284, 285; Gadamer, ‘The Problem of Historical Consciousness’, p. 120 ff.; Weinsheimer, Gadamer’s Hermeneutics: A Reading of Truth and Method, p. 184 ff.; F. Dallmayr, ‘Hermeneutics and Justice’, in K. Wright (ed.), Festivals of Interpretation: Essays on Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Work, Albany: State University of New York, 1990, pp. 90–110, shows the implications of these concepts for the interpretation of the American Constitution.

8

Cf. Weinsheimer, Gadamer’s Hermeneutics: A Reading of Truth and Method, p. 190 ff.

9

Ibid., p. 189 ff. The concept of equity cannot be rigorously defined and thus escapes the net of logic. Any attempted definition is a tautology: equity is what is equitable.

10 Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 278; Gadamer, ‘The Problem of Historical Consciousness’, p. 115 ff.; Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, p. 38 ff.; R.J. Bernstein, ‘Philosophy in the Conversation of Mankind’, in R. Hollinger (ed.), Hermeneutics and Praxis, Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame, 1985, 54–86, p. 84 ff.; R.J. Bernstein, ‘From Hermeneutics to Praxis’, in R. Hollinger (ed.), Hermeneutics and Praxis, Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame, 1985, 272–296, p. 277 ff.; Howard, Three Faces of Hermeneutics: An Introduction to Current Theories of Understanding, p. 127 ff.; Palmer, Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory in Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger and Gadamer, pp. 186, 187; Warnke, Gadamer, Hermeneutics, Tradition and Reason, p. 91 ff.; C. Larmore, ‘Moral Judgement’, Review of Metaphysics, 34: 2, 1981, 275–296, p. 289 ff.; R. Hollinger, ‘Practical Reason and Hermeneutics’, Philosophy and Rhetoric, 18: 2, 1985, ll3–122, p. 113 ff.; M.C. McGee and J.R. Lyne, ‘What Are Nice Folks Like You Doing in a Place Like This?’ in J.S. Nelson, A. Megill and D.A. McCloskey (eds), The Rhetoric of the Human Sciences: Language and Argument in Scholarship and Public Affairs, Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987, 381–406, p. 294 ff.; Habermas, ‘A Review of Gadamer’s Truth and Method’, p. 352; Weinsheimer, Gadamer’s Hermeneutics: A Reading of Truth and Method,

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p. 184 ff.; Weinsheimer, Gadamer’s Hermeneutics: A Reading of Truth and Method, p. 306 ff.; R. Bubner, Essays in Hermeneutical and Critical Theory, New York: Columbia University Press, 1988, p. viii; L.S. Self, ‘Rhetoric and Phronesis: The Aristotelian Ideal’, Philosophy and Rhetoric, 12: 2, 1979, 130–145, p. 131 ff.; J. McDowell, ‘Virtue and Reason’, The Monist, 62, 1979, 331–350; P. Schuchman, ‘Aristotle’s Phronesis and Gadamer’s Hermeneutics’, Philosophy Today, 23, 1979, 41–50, p. 42 ff.; Hans, ‘Hermeneutics, Play, Deconstruction’, p. 309 ff.; D. Wiggins, ‘Deliberation and Practical Reason’, in A.O. Rorty (ed.), Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980, 221–240, p. 227 ff. Gadamer’s treatment of Aristotle’s doctrine of phronesis is an example of his own hermeneutics in action. By applying Aristotle’s text to the question of the universal validity of scientific method he not only comes to a new understanding of Aristotle’s text, but at the same time reaches a new understanding of scientific method. 11

Nichomachean Ethics 1103b. See Aristotle, The Ethics of Aristotle, trans. J.A.K. Thomson, Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics, 1965. Cf. Larmore, ‘Moral Judgement’, p. 290.

12 Nichomachean Ethics 1109b 23. Cf. Larmore, ‘Moral Judgement’, p. 290. 13 This involves the concept of a ‘fusion of horizons’. See Gadamer, Truth and Method, pp. 273–74, 337–38 and 358; and Chapter 8 below. 14 Ibid., p. 283. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid., p. 286. 17 Ibid., p. 274. Early hermeneutics specified three elements, namely, understanding (subtilitas intelligendi ), explication (s. explicandi ) and application (s. applicandi ), in which subtilitas refers to a capacity or power. 18 Ibid., p. 285. 19 For the simultaneity and coincidence of understanding, interpretation and application, see ibid., p. 274 ff.; Palmer, Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory in Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger and Gadamer, p. 186 ff.; Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, p. 38 ff.; Habermas, ‘A Review of Gadamer’s Truth and Method’, p. 352; Weinsheimer, Gadamer’s Hermeneutics: A Reading of Truth and Method, p. 184 ff.; Hans, ‘Hermeneutics, Play, Deconstruction’, p. 309. Derrida would agree that interpretation and understanding are one and the same, but draws different conclusions. See Hans, ‘Hermeneutics, Play, Deconstruction’, p. 309. Heidegger, on the other hand, distinguishes interpretation and understanding. See H.L. Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, Division 1, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991, p. 184 ff. 20 Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 305. 21 Hans, ‘Hermeneutics, Play, Deconstruction’, p. 309. 22 Gadamer, ‘The Problem of Historical Consciousness’, p. 286. 23 For the ethical component of design, see Chapter 5 below. 24 An argument can be made that the application of every law, including scientific laws and whether relating to physical or human matters, always involves an act of interpretation in its application in a practical situation. 25 We introduced design as play in Chapter 1. The following notions concerning rules and game-playing are adapted from Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 91 ff., where as part of his strategy to demonstrate alternatives to Descartes’ subject-object model of ontology, he uses the metaphor of game-playing to develop the idea that the experience of art can make a claim to truth unlike the objective stance defined by science. Gadamer’s exposition of the nature of play has other relevance for designing than that indicated here, especially in the consideration of the design product as a work of art. For commentaries on Gadamer’s philosophy of play, see Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, p. 120 ff.; R.L. Gregory, ‘Touching Truth’, in H. Lawson and L. Appignanesi (eds), Dismantling Truth: Reality in the Post-modern World, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989, 93–100, p. 97;

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Notes

Howard, Three Faces of Hermeneutics: An Introduction to Current Theories of Understanding, p. 143 ff.; Palmer, Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory in Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger and Gadamer, p. 171 ff.; Warnke, Gadamer, Hermeneutics, Tradition and Reason, pp. 48–50; Hogan, ‘Gadamer and the Hermeneutical Experience’, p. 10; T. Kisiel, ‘The Happening of Tradition: the Hermeneutics of Gadamer and Heidegger’, in R. Hollinger (ed.), Hermeneutics and Praxis, Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame, 1985, 3–31, pp. 16, 17; J.D. Caputo, ‘The Thought of Being and the Conversation of Mankind: The Case of Heidegger and Rorty’, in R. Hollinger (ed.), Hermeneutics and Praxis, Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame, 1985, 248–271, p. 257; Bernstein, ‘From Hermeneutics to Praxis’, p. 274; Weinsheimer, Gadamer’s Hermeneutics: A Reading of Truth and Method, pp. 100–107; Hans, ‘Hermeneutics, Play, Deconstruction’; Hans, ‘Hans-Georg Gadamer and Hermeneutic Phenomenology’, pp. 8, 9; Linge, ‘Introduction’, p. xxii-xxiii; C.S. Byrum, ‘Philosophy as Play’, Man and World, 8, 1975, 315–326. Johan Huizinger’s classic (J. Huizinger, Homo Ludens, Boston: Beacon Press, 1970) develops other aspects of the theme. 26 Cf. Warnke, Gadamer, Hermeneutics, Tradition and Reason, pp. 48–50. 27 Cf. Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 99; Howard, Three Faces of Hermeneutics: An Introduction to Current Theories of Understanding, p. 143 ff. 28 M. Heidegger, Der Satz vom Grund, Auflage, Pfullingen: Verlag Gûnther Neske, 1965, p. 188, quoted in Kisiel, ‘The Happening of Tradition: The Hermeneutics of Gadamer and Heidegger’, p. 16. Cf. Hogan, ‘Gadamer and the Hermeneutical Experience’, p. 10. 29 Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 92. 30 Like players in a game who enter into a game-space (Spielraum), designers enter a closed world cut off from the everyday when they become involved in designing. See Hogan, ‘Gadamer and the Hermeneutical Experience’, p. 10; Linge, ‘Introduction’, p. xxiii. 31 Cf. Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 261. 32 This relates to the concept of self-presencing, developed by Hans, ‘Hermeneutics, Play, Deconstruction’, p. 313 ff. 33 Kisiel, ‘The Happenning of Tradition: The Hermeneutics of Gadamer and Heidegger’, p. 17.

3

Creativity as commonplace

1

S. Abercrombie, Architecture as Art: An Esthetic Analysis, New York: Van Nostrand

2

Ibid., p. 171.

3

Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, trans. F. Etchells, New York: Dover, 1931,

Reinhold, 1984, p. 170.

pp. 221–223. For an examination of Le Corbusier’s use of symbols of redemption see D. Weston, ‘The lantern and the glass: On the themes of renewal and dwelling in Le Corbusier’s early art and architecture’, in I.B. Whyte (ed.), Spirituality and the City, London: Routledge, 2003, 146–177. 4

Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, p. 102.

5

R.S. Wurman (ed.), What Will Be Has Always Been: The Words of Louis I. Kahn, New York:

6

Ibid., p. 29.

7

Note Popper’s characterisation of hypothesis formation as beyond the realms of rationality.

Access & Rizzoli, 1986, p. 32.

See K.R. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge, London: Routledge, 2002. 8

A. Newell and H. Simon, Human Problem Solving, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall,

9

D. Kolb, Experiential Learning as the Source of Learning and Development, Englewood

1972. Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1984. 10 See H. Feigl, ‘The ‘mental’ and the ‘physical’’, in G. Maxwell and M. Scriver (eds), Concepts, Theories and the Mind-body Problem, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota

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Notes

Press, 1958, 370–497; and B. Edwards, Drawing on the Right of the Brain, Los Angeles: J P Tarcher, 1979. Not everyone who accepts the dual knowledge theory holds with the significance of the two hemispheres. 11

Kolb, Experiential Learning as the Source of Learning and Development, p. 67.

12 Ibid., p. 167. 13 See A. Ward, ‘A phenomenological analysis of the design process’, Design Studies, 10: 1, 1989; A. Ward, ‘Design cosmologies and brain research’, Design Studies, 5: 4, 1989; J. Albrecht, ‘Architecture and the disproportionate development of human faculties’, Journal of Architectural Education, 43: 3, 1990, 20–25, and N. Cross, ‘The nature and nurture of design ability’, Design Studies, 11: 3, 1990, 127–140. 14 J. Marías, History of Philosophy, trans. C.C. Strowbridge and S. Appelbaum, New York: Dover Publications, 1967, p. 315. 15 Norberg-Schulz, Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture, p. 1. 16 The theme of genius loci was developed by Patrick Geddes. See V. Welter, Biopolis: Patrick Geddes and the City of Life, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003, and V.M. Welter, ‘From locus genii to heart of the city: embracing the spirit of the city’, in I.B. Whyte (ed.), Modernism and the Spirit of the City, London: Routledge, 2003, 35–56. 17 Norberg-Schulz, Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture, p. 18. 18 Ibid., p. 5. 19 Ibid., p. 23. 20 Although the judicary entertains the concept of the ‘spirit of the law’, which roughly equates with its ‘intention’. 21 R.L. Gregory (ed.) and O.L. Zangwill, The Oxford Companion to the Mind, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987, p. 149. 22 See H.L. Dreyfus, ‘Why we do not have to worry about speaking the language of the computer’, Information Technology & People, 11: 4, 1998, 281–289; T. Winograd and F. Flores, Understanding Computers and Cognition: A New Foundation for Design, Reading, Mass.: Addison Wesley, 1986; and S. Gallagher, ‘Hermeneutics and the cognitive sciences’, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 11: 10–11, 2004, 162–174. In Chapter 10 (Myth, mandala and metaphor) we examine architecture and cognitive structures in relation to metaphor. 23 M. Boden, The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms, London: Abacus, 1990. 24 E. Edmonds (ed.), Proceedings of the Fourth Conference on Creativity & Cognition, New York, NY: ACM Press, 2002. 25 D.E. Rumelhart and J.L. McClelland (eds), Parallel Distributed Processing: Explorations in the Microstructure of Cognition, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987. 26 R. Coyne, M. Rosenman, A. Radford, M. Balachandran and J. Gero, Knowledge-Based Design Systems, Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1990. 27 G. Ryle, The Concept of Mind, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963. 28 G. Lakoff and M. Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1980. 29 See A. Clark, ‘ Reasons, robots and the extended mind’, Mind & Language, 16: 2, 2001, 121–145; A. Clark, Being There: Putting Brain, Body and World Together Again, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1997; and A. Clark, Natural-Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies, and the Future of Human Intelligence, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. 30 See F.A. Yates, The Art of Memory, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966. 31 D. Schön, The Reflective Practitioner, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1982. 32 See C. Halcrow, A. Ferries, I. Wood and S. Creigh-Tyte (eds), Creative Industries Mapping Document: Report of the Ministerial Creative Industries Strategy Group, London: Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 2001. 33 W. James, The Principles of Psychology, New York: Dover, 1950. 34 J. Dewey, Art as Experience, New York: Wideview Perigee, 1980.

273

Notes

35 Heidegger, Being and Time. 36 H.-G. Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. J. Weinsheimer, New York: Seabury Press, 1975, p. 146; and Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, pp. 118–125. 37 Dewey, Art as Experience, p. 16. 38 Ibid., p. 15. 39 Ibid., pp. 73–74. 40 See Chapter 13 (Random thoughts on the Way) for an elaboration of this theme in relation to Vijñânavâda Buddhism.

Part 2: Edification 1

We first examined the propositions contained in this section in a series of articles: R. Coyne, ‘The disintegrated curriculum: hermeneutics and the four modes of professional education’, Proc. Universities as Interpretive Communities, Sydney: The University of Sydney, 1993, 145–168; A. Snodgrass, ‘On theorising architectural education’, Architectural Theory Review, 5: 2, 2000, 89–93; A. Snodgrass, ‘Can design assessment be objective?’ Architectural Theory Review, 1: 1, 1996, 30–47.

2

Anon., Training Trainee Solicitors: The Law Society Requirements, Redditch, Worcestershire: Education and Training Unit, The Law Society, 2004.

4 The disintegrated curriculum 1

J. Egan, Accelerating Change: A Report by the Strategic Forum for Construction, London: Rethinking Construction, 2002, p. 8. Also see G. Roberts, SET for success: The supply of people with science, technology, engineering and mathematics skills, London: HM Treasury, 2002.

2

Egan, Accelerating Change: A Report by the Strategic Forum for Construction, p. 19

3

C. Stansfield Smith and H. Mallinson, Architecture Education for the 21st Century: RIBA Review of Architectural Education, London: RIBA, 1999.

4

See for example D. Libeskind, ‘Observation on education of architects’, in M. Pearce and M. Toy (eds), Educating Architects, London: Academy Editions, 1995, 88–89, p. 89 and L. Woods, ‘What has architecture got to do with the siege of Sarajevo?’ in M. Pearce and M. Toy (eds), Educating Architects, London: Academy Editions, 1995, 90–95. The RIBA criteria require students to ‘Listen, and critically respond to, the views of others’ as a communicative skill, but clearly not potentially to reform the gatekeeper institution. See RIBA, Criteria for Validation, London: Royal Institute of British Architects, 2003, p. 6; RIBA, Tomorrow’s Architect, London: RIBA, 2003; J. Hill, The Illegal Architect, London: Black Dog Publishing, 1998; and G. Stevens, The Favored Circle: The Social Foundations of Architectural Distinction, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1998.

5

For discussions of the changing nature of practice see R. Gutman, Architectural Practice: A Critical View, New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 1988, and F. Duffy, ‘Strategic overview’, Strategic Study of the Profession: Phase 1 – Strategic Overview, London: Royal Institute of British Architects, 1992, 1–11, p. 4.

6

See P. Carolin, ‘Expectation versus reality in architectural education’, Strategic Study of the Profession: Phase 1 – Strategic Overview: Royal Institute of British Architects, 1992, 171–182, p. 178. Also see JISC, Effective Practice with e-Learning: A Good Practice Guide in Designing for Learning, Bristol: Higher Education Funding Council of England, 2004.

7

H. Rittel and M. Weber, ‘Dilemmas in a general theory of planning’, Policy Sciences, 4,

8

Schön, The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action.

9

W.J. Ong, Rhetoric, Romance, and Technology: Studies in the Interaction of Expression and

1973, 155–169. See Coyne, ‘Wicked problems revisited’.

Culture, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1971.

274

Notes

10 See E.D. Hirsch, Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know, Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, 1987. 11

T. Stokes and L. Grigg, Research performance indicators survey, Commissioned Report No. 21, Canberra: National Board of Employment, Education and Training, Australian Government Publishing Service, 1993, p. xi.

12 P. Jackson, Life in Classrooms, New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1968. 13 See for example M. Tafuri, Architecture and Utopia: Design and Capitalist Development, trans. B.L. La Penta, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996. 14 Contemporary developments in ‘systems thinking’ are alert to the problems here, and attempt new modes of interaction between ‘stakeholders’ in professional communications. See D. Russell and R. Ison, ‘The research-development relationship in rural communities: An opportunity for contextual science’, in R. Ison and D. Russell (eds), Agricultural Extension and Rural Development: Breaking out of Traditions, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, 10–31. 15 See M. Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. W. Lovitt, New York: Harper and Row, 1977; M.E. Zimmerman, Heidegger’s Confrontation With Modernity: Technology, Politics, Art, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1990; and H.L. Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time Division I, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990. 16 See J.-J. Rousseau, Emile, or, Treatise on education, trans. W.H. Payne, Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003. 17 See for example A. Balfour, ‘The Architectural Association’, in M. Pearce and M. Toy (eds), Educating Architects, London: Academy Editions, 1995, 78–79. 18 P. Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, trans. M.B. Ramos, New York: Herder and Herder, 1972. 19 M.u. Zavarzadeh and D. Morton, ‘Theory pedagogy politics: the crisis of the subject in the humanities’, Boundary, 2: 15, 1986–87, 1–22, p. 11. 20 S. Aronowitz and H. Giroux, Education under Siege: The Conservative, Liberal, and Radical Debate over Schooling, South Hadley, Mass.: Bergin and Garvey, 1985, p. 7. 21 S. Gallagher, Hermeneutics and Education, Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1992. See also S. Bramall, ‘It’s good to talk: Education and hermeneutics in conversation’, Journal of Philosophy of Education, 33: 3, 1999, 463–472. 22 J.-J. Rousseau, The Emile of Jean Jacques Rousseau, trans. W. Boyd, New York, NY: Teachers College Press, Columbia University, 1957, p. 108. 23 Gallagher, Hermeneutics and Education, p. 262. 24 Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 315. 25 See T. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970; and also J.-F. Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986. 26 Gallagher, Hermeneutics and Education. 27 J.D. Caputo, Radical Hermeneutics: Repetition, Deconstruction, and the Hermeneutical Project, Bloomington, In.: Indiana University Press, 1987. 28 J. Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. G.C. Spivak, Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976. See also P. Trifonas, ‘Jacques Derrida as a philosopher of education’, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 32: 3, 2000, 271–281, and H. Wang, ‘Aporias, responsibility, and the im/possibility of teaching multicultural education’, Educational Theory, 55: 1, 2005, 45–60. 29 M. Foucault and P. Rabinow (ed.), The Foucault Reader: an Introduction to Foucault’s Thought, London: Penguin, 1984. 30 Caputo, Radical Hermeneutics: Repetition, Deconstruction, and the Hermeneutical Project, p. 211.

275

Notes

31 Ibid. 32 Ibid. 33 Gallagher, Hermeneutics and Education, p. 45. 34 Ibid., p. 51. 35 H.-G. Gadamer, ‘Hermeneutics and social science’, Cultural Hermeneutics, 2, 1975, 307–316, p. 92. 36 Zavarzadeh and Morton, ‘Theory pedagogy politics: the crisis of the subject in the humanities’, p. 2. 37 Ibid., p. 4. The elevation of play and the ‘decentering’ of the subject are variations around the themes of Heidegger’s deconstructive phenomenology. For example, according to Heidegger the essence of truth is not correspondence, but the disclosive play set up by the clash between ‘earth’ and ‘world’, or, in other words, the complex flux of the actual moment with all its complex interactions. Heidegger’s thought is constituted by many examples of such deconstructions, conflations and reversals: the primary human experience is not that of a subject disconnected from an object world (as Descartes taught), but a world of total unreflective involvement; time is not primarily that which is measured, but a phenomenon that primarily presents itself in terms of the unfulfilment of roles; it is not that artworks occupy a space (locus), but that place (topos) is revealed in the artwork. In all such reversals the terms undergo revision. 38 Derrida, Of Grammatology, p. 50. 39 Gallagher, Hermeneutics and Education, p. 284. 40 Ibid. 41 Caputo, Radical Hermeneutics: Repetition, Deconstruction, and the Hermeneutical Project, p. 278. 42 Foucault and Rabinow (ed.), The Foucault Reader: an Introduction to Foucault’s Thought, London: Penguin, 1984, p. 61. 43 Caputo, Radical Hermeneutics: Repetition, Deconstruction, and the Hermeneutical Project, p. 231. 44 Ibid., p. 230. 45 Ibid. 46 Ibid., p. 231. 47 Ibid. 48 See Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. 49 Caputo, Radical Hermeneutics: Repetition, Deconstruction, and the Hermeneutical Project, p. 233. 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid. 52 Ibid., p. 235. 53 Ibid., p. 234. 54 J. Derrida, ‘The principle of reason: the university in the eyes of its pupils’, Diacritics, 13, 1983, 3–20, p. 16. 55 Ibid. 56 D.G. Atkins and M.L. Johnson (eds), Writing and Reading Differently: Deconstruction and the Teaching of Composition and Literature, Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas Press, 1985. 57 Ibid., pp. 6, 7. 58 R. Barthes, ‘Writers, Intellectuals, Teachers’, in S. Sontag (ed.), A Barthes Reader, New York: Hill and Wang, 1982, 380–402. 59 G.L. Ulmer, ‘Textshop for post(e)pedagogy’, in G.D. Atkins and M.L. Johnson (eds), Writing and Reading Differently: Deconstruction and the Teaching of Composition and Literature, Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1985, 38–64, p. 39. The best of such word

276

Notes

play is Caputo’s frivolous concatenation to produce ‘Derridada’ – overlapping Derrida with Dadaism. A further play would be to insert laughter with ‘Derri(ri)dada’, but this would be redundant. To exploit the fact that dada means ‘hobby horse’ in French would, no doubt, be going too far. 60 Ibid. 61 Derrida, ‘The principle of reason: the university in the eyes of its pupils’, p. 3. 62 Ulmer, ‘Textshop for post(e)pedagogy’. 63 B. Johnson, ‘Teaching deconstructively’; ibid., pp. 140–148. 64 Ibid., p. 140. 65 Ibid. 66 Ibid. 67 Ibid., p. 141. 68 Ibid. 69 Zavarzadeh and Morton, ‘Theory pedagogy politics: the crisis of the subject in the humanities’, p. 8. 70 Ibid. 71 Ibid., p. 10. 72 Ulmer, ‘Textshop for post(e)pedagogy’, p. 61. Also see M. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. H. Iswolsky, Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1984. 73 Ulmer, ‘Textshop for post(e)pedagogy’, pp. 61, 62. 74

See also B. Tschumi, ‘One, two, three: jump’, in M. Pearce and M. Toy (eds), Educating Architects, London: Academy Editions, 1995, 24–25.

75 Gallagher, Hermeneutics and Education, p. 313. 76 Derrida, ‘The principle of reason: the university in the eyes of its pupils’, p. 17. 77 Ibid., p. 18. 78 Ibid., p. 17. 79 It is obviously necessary to look beyond the old prejudices against Continental philosophy for the impetus for interesting debate. The familiar conservative position towards deconstruction is exemplified by Bloom who states that comparative literature ‘has now fallen largely into the hands of a group of professors who are influenced by the post-Sartrean generation of Parisian Heideggerians, in particular Derrida, Foucault and Barthes. The school is called Deconstructionism, and it is the last, predictable, stage in the suppression of reason and the denial of the possibility of truth in the name of philosophy. The interpreter’s creative activity is more important than the text; there is no text, only interpretation. Thus the one thing most necessary for us, the knowledge of what these texts have to tell us, is turned over to the subjective, creative selves of these interpreters, who say that there is both no text and no reality to which the text refers.’ (A. Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind, New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1987, p. 379.) Also see A.D. Sokal and J. Bricmont, Intellectual Impostures: Postmodern Philosophers’ Abuse of Science, London: Profile Books, 2003. 80 This distinction is advanced by Gallagher in Gallagher, Hermeneutics and Education. 81 Ibid. 82 E. Betti, ‘Hermeneutics as the general methodology of the Geisteswissenschaften’, in G.L. Ormiston and A.D. Schrift (eds), The Hermeneutic Tradition: From Ast to Ricoeur, Albany, New York: SUNY Press, 1990, 159–197. 83 See E.D. Hirsch, The Aims of Interpretation, Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1976. Fish takes to task Hirsch’s proposition that there are stable, independent meanings. Hirsch gives examples of phrases that have uncontroversial meanings accessible to all speakers of the language, such as the phrase ‘The air is crisp’. In other words the phrase has only one interpretation. Fish counters this argument: ‘The obviousness of the utterance’s meaning is not a function of the values its words have in a linguistic system that

277

Notes

is independent of context: rather, it is because the words are heard as already embedded in a context that they have a meaning that Hirsch can then cite as obvious.’ (S. Fish, Is There a Text in This Class?: The Authority of Interpretive Communities, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980, p. 309.) 84 See J. Habermas, ‘A review of Gadamer’s Truth and Method’, in G.L. Ormiston and A.D. Schrift (eds), The Hermeneutic Tradition: From Ast to Ricoeur, Albany, New York: SUNY Press, 1990, 213–244; and J. Habermas, ‘The hermeneutic claim to universality’, in G.L. Ormiston and A.D. Schrift (eds), The Hermeneutic Tradition: From Ast to Ricoeur, Albany, New York: SUNY Press, 1990, 245–272. 85 Gallagher, Hermeneutics and Education, p. 17. 86 Ibid., p. 18. 87 H.-G. Gadamer, ‘Reply to my critics’, in G.L. Ormiston and A.D. Schrift (eds), The Hermeneutic Tradition: From Ast to Ricoeur, Albany, New York: SUNY Press, 1990, 273–297. 88 J. Derrida, ‘Three questions to Hans-Georg Gadamer’, in D.P. Michelfelder and R.E. Palmer (eds), Dialogue and Deconstruction: The Gadamer–Derrida Encounter, Albany, New York: SUNY Press, 1989, 52–54. 89 Gadamer’s reply to Derrida is that what he meant by ‘good will’ has nothing to do with metaphysics or ethics and is merely an observation about communication. Good will is present where ‘one does not go about identifying the weaknesses of what another person says in order to prove that one is always right, but one seeks instead as far as possible to strengthen the other’s viewpoint so that what the other person has to say becomes illuminating. Such an attitude seems essential to me for any understanding at all to come about.’ (H.-G. Gadamer, ‘Reply to Jacques Derrida’, ibid., 55–57, p. 55.) 90 Gallagher, Hermeneutics and Education, p. 343. 91 Ibid., p. 344. 92 Ibid., p. 343. 93 Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, p. 378. 94 See C. Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, New York: Basic Books, 1971. This theme of the indebtedness of thought to community is also developed by Fish. In the context of interpreting texts, Fish argues that a reader’s interpretive strategies are ‘community property’, and in so far as these strategies ‘at once enable and limit the operations of his consciousness, he is too’. (Fish, Is There a Text in This Class?: The Authority of Interpretive Communities, p. 14.) Fish also argues: ‘since the thoughts an individual can think and the mental operations he can perform have their source in some or other interpretive community, he is as much a product of that community (acting as an extension of it) as the meanings it enables him to produce’ (p. 14). 95 Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, p. 360. 96 According to Ryle silent reading has only been practised in Europe since the Middle Ages (G. Ryle, The Concept of Mind, Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1949). 97 Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, p. 76. 98 K. Bruffee, ‘Collaborative learning and the “conversation of mankind”’, College English, 46, 1984, 635–652, p. 640. 99 Ibid., p. 646. 100 Gallagher, Hermeneutics and Education, p. 248. 101 Ibid., p. 265. 102 Bruffee, ‘Collaborative learning and the “conversation of mankind”’, p. 648. 103 See Chapter 9 (A world of difference). 104 Gallagher, Hermeneutics and Education, p. 137. 105 Ibid., p. 129. 106 Ibid., p. 136. 107 Ibid., p. 143.

278

Notes

108 One of the most distressing pedagogical situations is where the teacher, thinking they are presenting something new, is met with indifference from the students. To be told ‘we know all that – what’s the big deal?’ is even more disconcerting than ‘we don’t understand’. 109 Gallagher, Hermeneutics and Education, p. 144. In keeping with the tenets of liberal education, learning about the world is also learning about one’s ‘self’. According to Gallagher, in ‘discovering the possible connections between the unfamiliar and the familiar, the learner also discovers his own possibilities’ (pp. 143, 144). All understanding is ‘self understanding’. 110 According to Bloom, there is ‘one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative’. (Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind, p. 24) 111 Fish, Is There a Text in This Class?: The Authority of Interpretive Communities, p. 319. 112 Rorty describes the tension between objectivism and subjectivism, romanticism and moralism, idealism and realism as ‘seesaw’ battles from which we need to be disengaged. See Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, pp. 10, 11. 113 Fish, Is There a Text in This Class?: The Authority of Interpretive Communities, p. 319. 114 Ibid. 115 Ibid. 116 Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism. 117 For example, the moderate perspective provides a broader range of possible views of the RIBA criteria, Quality Assurance benchmarks and the European Directive – views informed by the positioning of such documents within interpretive communities.

5 1

Ethics and practice Literally, knowing or instructing. As used in this book ‘kenning’ suggests the metaphorical binding of two concepts, or the replacement of a term by its more colourful analogue.

2 3

See Gadamer, Reason in the Age of Science, pp. 17, 18. Gadamer points out that the word ‘participation’ is paradoxical. In its literal meaning it means ‘taking part’, but when we participate we don’t take a part or parts, but take the whole; and we don’t take a part away, but share in the whole, and by sharing are enriched. The whole does not decrease, but enlarges. By participation, we enhance our lives. See H.-G. Gadamer, ‘The Hermeneutics of Suspicion’, in G. Shapiro and A. Sica (eds), Hermeneutics: Questions and Prospects, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1984, p. 64.

4

In Heideggerian terms, this is to establish a ‘clearing’, and leads into the questions of the spontaneous revealing of decisions in the mid-space between the designers and the situation of the design, elicited by processes of question and answer.

5

The word ‘debate’ comes from de-battere, with connotations of battle, confrontation and violence.

6

There are attempts to incorporate techne in studio teaching as a design consideration, often under the rubric of the ‘poetics of construction’ (K. Frampton and J. Cava (eds), Studies in Tectonic Culture: The Poetics of Construction in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Architecture, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995), tectonics, materiality or more successfully as cunning. See Dorrian and Hawker, Metis: Urban Cartographies.

6 1

Design assessment The identification of models and metaphors and their function of simultaneously revealing and obscuring possibilities of practice are considerations developed in Snodgrass and Coyne, ‘Models, Metaphors, and the Hermeneutics of Design’.

279

Notes

2

See Chapter 1. The scientific and structuralist accounts of linguistics ignore this and specify the properties of words and sentences as they suppose them to occur in a contextless state. The rules they ‘discover’, however, come after the event of language. A native speaker does not need to know grammatical rules to speak grammatically or meaningfully. The rules are embedded in language use.

3

On the concept of the interactive fusion of horizons see Chapter 8.

4

The term ‘forestructure’ is used in the Heideggerian sense. See Heidegger, Being and Time, ¶31~33 (182–203), and Chapter 1. The term ‘prejudice’ is used here in the hermeneutical sense in which Gadamer uses it, that is, as a provocative challenge to the Enlightenment’s ‘prejudice against prejudice’. Gadamer’s point is that a prejudiceless state of mind is unattainable; all interpretation is by way of a prejudging, and it could not be any other way. Prejudice in this view can be enabling.

5

In Gadamerian terms, the forestructures of understanding are the consequence of effective-historical consciousness. See Gadamer, Truth and Method, pp. 267 ff. and 305 ff.

6

This corresponds to Fish’s ‘interpretive community’, and to what is often referred to as a ‘language community’, meaning a community that shares a language of discourse. (See S. Fish, Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric, and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1989, p. 141.) We use ‘hermeneutic community’ rather than ‘interpretive community’ because hermeneutics is as much a matter of practical application as it is of interpretation considered alone, and in preference to ‘language community’ because this latter term, too narrowly read, can overemphasise linguistic concerns as contrasted with the applied practices of a professional or other community. The boundaries of the community of architects, for example, cut across language barriers, if ‘language’ is taken to mean verbal language; and an architectural ‘language’ will include shared visual and graphic modes of communication.

7

See Chapter 1 on the subject of tacit understandings.

8

See Chapter 2 (Playing by the rules).

9

Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, p. 47. Cf. Fish, Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric, and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies, p. 126.

10 This internalisation, a process of socialisation, is as much a matter of the body as the mind. The norms of a community are ‘impressed’ into or onto the body. Cf. P. Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977; M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1977. 11

The same can be said about the oft-cited objectivity–relativity dichotomy. The assessment of a design can never be ‘merely relative’ because this is to say that it is a matter of unrestricted subjective choice, a notion without substance.

12 Their role becomes much like that of a written contract, agreement or dispute about which shifts the discussion into a particular arena of community praxis. 13 The design process itself involves repetitive assessment. Evaluation is an integral part of designing practice. 14 Fish, Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric, and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies, p. 122 ff. 15 We use the word ‘argument’, ultimately from the Latin arguere, ‘to make clear‘, rather than ‘debate’, since this latter term, which traces by way of LLat. battualia (pl.), ‘gladiatorial contests’, to Lat. battuere, ‘to beat’ (OED), has confrontational and adversarial connotations which are inappropriate in the present context. ’Talk’ is not here ‘idle talk’, either in the Heideggerian or the everyday sense, but refers to the disclosive function of language, as developed in the philosophies of Heidegger, Gadamer and Ricoeur. See J.J. DiCenso, Hermeneutics and the Disclosure of Truth: A Study in the Work of Heidegger, Gadamer and Ricoeur, Charlotteville: Unversity Press of Virginia, 1990.

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Notes

16 From Lat. per + suadere, ‘by way of advice’. ‘Advice’ in turn is from Rom. ad + visum, p.p. of videre, ‘see’, with the implication of bringing the other to a new seeing. 17 See esp. C. Perelman, The New Rhetoric and the Humanities, Dordrecht, London and Boston: D. Reidel, 1979; J.S. Nelson, A. Megill and D.A. McCloskey, The Rhetoric of the Human Sciences: Language and Argument in Scholarship and Public Affairs. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Winsconsin Press, 1987. 18 ‘Articulation’ is used in its Heideggerian sense (with a capital A). See Dreyfus, Being-in-theWorld: A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, Division 1, p. 215 ff.; Heidegger, Being and Time, pp. 203, 204. 19 Fish, Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric, and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies, p. 135. Toulmin puts forward the concept of intellectual authority in S. Toulmin, The Philosophy of Science: An Introduction, London and New York: Hutchinson’s University Library, 1953. Fish gives a critique in Fish, Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric, and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies, Ch. 11, ‘AntiProfessionalism’. 20 This corresponds to Foucault’s concept of the ‘regime of truth’. See, for example, Michel Foucault, ‘Discourse on Language’, trans. R. Swyer, in M. Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A.M.S. Smith, New York: Harper and Row, 1972, Appendix. 21 See J. Derrida, Aporias, trans. T. Dutoit, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1993; and Wang, ‘Aporias, responsibility, and the im/possibility of teaching multicultural education’. 22 In the event of student appeals against certain judgements, the case is generally made on the grounds of procedural irregularity, i.e. that the examining body was inquorate, or that the student was not treated the same as the rest, legalities that are also dependent on interpretive practices. Also note that the ‘standards’ are not inflexible, but are continually changing as debate and its situational field alter. This common interpretational sense can never be fully articulated. Whereas aspects can be brought to awareness and thus examined and debated as circumstances change, other aspects must remain tacit. This works in the manner of metaphor change, in which the examination of old situations in the light of new metaphors simultaneously reveals new aspects of the situation and covers over others. See G. Hill, ‘Heidegger’s Absent Presence in Design: A Response to Snodgrass and Coyne’s “Is Designing Hermeneutical”’, Architectural Theory Review, 2: 2, 1997, 1–16. 23 ‘Dialogue’ is here intended to carry the connotations given to it by Gadamer. See Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 330 ff., 344 ff., 487 ff.; Chapter 1 of this book; Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, p. 161 ff., 198 ff., 233 ff.; J. Bleicher, Contemporary Hermeneutics: Hermeneutics as Method, Philosophy and Critique, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1990, p. 113 ff.; Warnke, Gadamer, Hermeneutics, Tradition and Reason, p. l00 ff.; Peters, ‘The Nature and Role of Presupposition: An Inquiry into Contemporary Hermeneutics’, p. 217 ff.; Hogan, ‘Gadamer and the Hermeneutical Experience’; Kisiel, ‘The Happening of Tradition: The Hermeneutics of Gadamer and Heidegger’, p. 9 ff.; Bernstein, ‘From Hermeneutics to Praxis’, p. 288 ff.; Bruns, ‘On the Weakness of Language in the Human Sciences’, p. 252 ff.; Weinsheimer, Gadamer’s Hermeneutics: A Reading of Truth and Method, p. 206 ff.; Hans, ‘Hermeneutics, Play, Deconstruction’, p. 303 ff.; Linge, ‘Introduction’, p. xx ff.; etc.

7 1

Design amnesia A. Hardy and N. Teymur, Architectural History and the Design Studio. London: ?uestion Press, 1996.

2

The associations of modernism and avant-gardism are traced in M. Crinson and J. Lubbock, Architecture, Art or Profession? Three Hundred Years of Architectural Education in Britain, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1994.

281

Notes

3

This, of course, was the basis for the Prince of Wales’ criticism of the design schools in the UK, and the establishment of the Prince of Wales Institute.

4

This lack of scrutiny is evidenced by the comparative lack of attempts to advance heritage conservation as a critical discipline. The focus of conservation literature, where it is not concerned with politics, is still predominantly empirical and positivist.

5

In S. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling/Repetition, trans. H. Hong and E. Hong, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983.The following observations rely on the section entitled ‘Kierkegaard’s Philosophy of Existence’, in Risser, Hermeneutics and the Voice of the Other: Rereading Gadamer’s Philosophical Hermeneutics, pp. 33–40.

6

Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling/Repetition, p. 136, cited by Risser, Hermeneutics and the

7

See A. Snodgrass, Architecture, Time and Eternity: Stellar and Temporal Symbolism in

Voice of the Other: Rereading Gadamer’s Philosophical Hermeneutics, p. 35. Traditional Architecture, New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan, 1988, Ch. 2: ‘The Platonic Doctrine of Symbolism’. 8

Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling/Repetition, p. 131, quoted by Risser, Hermeneutics and the

9

See Snodgrass, Architecture, Time and Eternity: Stellar and Temporal Symbolism in

Voice of the Other: Rereading Gadamer’s Philosophical Hermeneutics, p. 35. Traditional Architecture, pp. 9–11. 10 Risser, Hermeneutics and the Voice of the Other: Rereading Gadamer’s Philosophical Hermeneutics, p. 34. In a footnote Risser refers the reader to J.D. Caputo, Radical Hermeneutics: Repetition. Deconstruction, and the Hermeneutic Project, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1987, p. 82 ff., where he shows that Heidegger subjects his own analysis to a repetition. For a definition of Dasein see Heidegger, Being and Time. In brief, it is that being which inquires after its own existence, or the human being thrown into the world. 11

Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 438.

12 Risser, Hermeneutics and the Voice of the Other: Rereading Gadamer’s Philosophical Hermeneutics, p. 51. 13 See T. Kisiel, ‘Repetition in Gadamer’s Hermeneutics’, Analecta Husserliana, 2, 1972. 14 ‘Tarrying’ here refers to Gadamer’s use of the term. See ‘Poetic Dwelling’, in Risser, Hermeneutics and the Voice of the Other: Rereading Gadamer’s Philosophical Hermeneutics, pp. 199–206. 15 The hermeneutical circle is not wheel-like. Its turning does not bring back the same. It is rather an evolutionary circle, in which new possibilities evolve. In this connection it is to be noted that the verbs ‘revolve’ and ‘evolve’ both come from the Latin volvere, ‘to roll’. To revolve is to roll over to the same; to evolve is to roll over to the different. 16 The word ‘oblivion’ is from the Latin oblivionem, from oblivisci, ‘forget’ (OED). 17 Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 16. 18 To respect the text of the past is to defer to it, with the etymological entailments of accepting its difference, and a deferral of judgement until the text has been heard. See Chapter 9 (A world of difference). 19 See Chapter 1. 20 Ste in ‘steward’ comes from OE stig, ‘house, hall’, + ward, ‘guard’: as steward of the past, memory/history guards the hall of the past.

Part 3: Otherness 1

Some of the ideas developed here first appeared in A. Snodgrass, ‘Asian studies and the fusion of horizons’, Asian Studies Review, 15: 3, 1992, 81–95; A. Snodgrass, ‘Travel in a different world makes a world of difference’, Architectural Theory Review, 7: 1, 2002, 85– 100; A. Snodgrass, ‘The Mandala and postmodernity’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians of Australia and New Zealand, 16, 1993, 68–89; A. Snodgrass, ‘A current

282

Notes

perspective on the Myanmar stupa tradition’, Traditions in Current Perspective, Proceedings of the Conference on Myanmar and Southeast Asian Studies: November 15–17 March, Yangon: Universities Historical Research Centre, 1996, 99–114; A. Snodgrass, ‘Angkor: mandala, myth and metaphor’, Proceedings of the Arts of Cambodia Conference, Canberra: National Gallery, 1993; A. Snodgrass, ‘Technology, Heidegger’s “Letting-be,” and Japanese New Wave Architecture’, Architectural Theory Review, 2: 2, 1997, 83–104; and A. Snodgrass, ‘Random thoughts on the way: The architecture of excursion and return’, Architectural Theory Review, 6: 1, 2001, 1–15. 2

S. Cairns, Drifting: Architecture and Migrancy, London: Routledge, 2003.

3

E. Gross, Jacques Lacan: A Feminist Introduction, London: Routledge, 1990, pp. 73, 74.

4

For the primary account of non-place see M. Augé, Non-places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, trans. J. Howe, London: Verso, 1995. Vidler provides an account of the architectural uncanny (A. Vidler, The Architectural Uncanny: Essays in the Modern Unhomely, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995). See T.Y. Levin, U. Frohne and P. Weibel (eds), CTRL [SPACE]: Rhetorics of Surveillance from Bentham to Big Brother, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002, for an account of the spatial implications of electronic surveillance.

5

L. Hyde, Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth and Art, New York: North Point Press,

6

M. Godelier, The Enigma of the Gift, trans. N. Scott, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999.

7

See P. Eisenman, House X, New York: Rizzoli, 1982, and F.O. Gehry, ‘1991 Frank O.

1998.

Gehry on his own house’, in C. Jencks and K. Kropf (eds), Theories and Manifestoes of Contemporary Architecture, Chichester: Wiley-Academic, 1997, 111–112.

8 The fusion of horizons 1

‘Asian Studies’ is a fuzzy construct, as chimerical as the ‘Orientalism’ that Said dismantled. It is used here to designate a vaguely defined area containing cultures perceived as differing from our own. The meaning of the term can be determined according to one’s preconceptions, in the manner of a Rorschach ink blot, the interpretation of which is interesting not for the way it defines the object, but for the way it defines our own prestructures of understanding or, to use Gadamer’s term, our ‘prejudices’.

2

This involves the complex knowledge–power dynamics spelt out by Foucault, Said and others. See, for example, M. Foucault, Power/Knowledge, trans. C. Gordon, Brighton, Sussex: Harvester Press, 1972; E. Said, Orientalism, New York: Vintage, 1978. These dynamics are complicated by the fact that in many situations the Asian country now wields the power–knowledge cudgel. We are the ones who are attempting to gain access to Japanese technology and managerial skills, not the other way round.

3

Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 321 ff. The following discussion of the I–Thou relationship follows Gadamer’s text and the commentorial paraphrase given in K. Wright, ‘Gadamer: The Speculative Structure of Language’, in B.R. Wachterhauser (ed.), Hermeneutics and Modern Philosophy, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986, 193–218, (esp. pp. 195–204, ‘The Event of Language and Its I–Thou Structure’).

4

Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 322.

5

Ibid.

6

Ibid.

7

Ibid.

8

Ibid.

9

Ibid.

10 Ibid. 11

Ibid.

12 Ibid., p. 323.

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Notes

13 Wright, ‘Gadamer: The Speculative Structure of Language’, p. 200. 14 In all of this Gadamer is speaking of our own historical past, our tradition, taken as a text. The experience of the ‘Thou’ is what he calls effective-historical consciousness (wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewusstsein). 15 Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 322. 16 Ibid., p. 324. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid., p. 325. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid., p. 321. 21 On the notion of the fusion of horizons see ibid., pp. 273, 274, 337–278, and 358; Garrett, ‘Hans-Georg Gadamer and the “Fusion of Horizons”’, p. 143 ff.; Howard, Three Faces of Hermeneutics: An Introduction to Current Theories of Understanding, p. 151 ff.; Palmer, Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory in Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger and Gadamer, pp. 201, 202; Warnke, Gadamer, Hermeneutics, Tradition and Reason, pp. 82, 103–107 and 169; L.M. Hinman, ‘Quid Facti or Quid Juris? The Fundamental Ambiguity of Gadamer’s Understanding of Hermeneutics’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 40, 1980, 512–535, (esp. p. 525 ff.); Dockhorn, ‘Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Truth and Method’, pp. 173, 174; Hogan, ‘Gadamer and the Hermeneutical Experience’; Mendelson, ‘The Habermas-Gadamer Debate’, p. 54 ff.; Buck, ‘The Structure of Hermeneutic Experience and the Problem of Tradition’, p. 39 ff.; Misgeld, ‘On Gadamer’s Hermeneutics’, pp. 154, 155; K. Mueller-Vollmer, ‘Introduction’, in K. Mueller-Vollmer (ed.), The Hermeneutics Reader: Texts of the German Tradition from the Enlightenment to the Present, London: Basil Blackwell, 1985, 1–44, p. 37 ff.; Linge, ‘Introduction’, p. 288; Habermas, ‘A Review of Gadamer’s Truth and Method’, (esp. p. 342 ff.); Weinsheimer, Gadamer’s Hermeneutics: A Reading of Truth and Method, p. 217 ff.; A. Giddens, New Rules of Sociological Method, London: Collingwood, 1976, p. 54 ff.; T. Peters, ‘Truth in History: Gadamer’s Hermeneutics and Pannenberg’s Apologetic Method’, Journal of Religion, 55, 1975, 36–56, p. 41 ff.; T. Kisiel, ‘Ideology Critique and Phenomenology – The Current Debate in German Philosophy’, Philosophy Today, 14, 1970, 151–160, p. 158; Smith, ‘Gadamer’s Hermeneutics and Ordinary Language Philosophy’, p. 297; Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, p. 61 ff. and 75 ff.; Linge, ‘Introduction’, p. xviii–xix and xxxvii–xl. 22 Gadamer uses the term ‘horizon’ in a different sense to Husserl and the phenomenologists, for whom it conveys the idea of an intentional structure of consciousness. See Peters, ‘Truth in History: Gadamer’s Hermeneutics and Pannenberg’s Apologetic Method’, p. 41; Garrett, ‘Hans-Georg Gadamer and the “Fusion of Horizons”’, p. 393; cf. H. Kuhn, ‘The Phenomenological Concept of Horizon’, in M. Farber (ed.), Philosophical Essays in Memory of Edmund Husserl, Cambridge: University of California Press, 1940, 106–123. 23 Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 269. 24 As Habermas, ‘A Review of Gadamer’s Truth and Method’, p. 342, says, the concept of the fusion of horizons ‘holds true for the vertical plane in which we overcome historical distance through understanding as well as for the horizontal plane in which understanding mediates geographical or cultural-linguistic distance’. 25 Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 272. 26 Ibid., p. 271. 27 Habermas, ‘A Review of Gadamer’s Truth and Method’, p. 344. 28 Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 272. 29 In relation to Said et al., this is to say that in this sense every interpretation is a construction or a reconstruction. 30 Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 358.

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31 Wright, ‘Gadamer: The Speculative Structure of Language’, p. 201. In a footnote Wright adds that this is the meaning of Gadamer’s notion of effective-history (Wirkungsgeschichte). 32 On the coincidence of interpretation, understanding and application see Chapter 2 (Playing by the rules). 33 Wright, ‘Gadamer: The Speculative Structure of Language’, p. 201. 34 Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, pp. 61, 62. 35 This means that there is no one correct interpretation of the other, but that the other horizon comprises a range of interpretational possibilities. This has important implications for education and research, since it means that attempts to discover what the culture of the other ‘means’, as when, for example, the alien culture is viewed as a set of signifiers and the task of the interpreter to indicate their significance, can never be definitively formulated or taught, but will differ not only from person to person, but from one situation to another according to the context of application. The teacher cannot teach the meaning of the alien. 36 Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 333 ff., ‘The Logic of Question and Answer’. 37 Given that we do not simply dismiss the other’s statements out of hand as irrational, primitive, superstitious, uncouth or whatever other pejorative rules the other out of the discourse. Dialogue always presupposes a certain degree of goodwill and receptivity to what the other has to say. 38 Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 272. 39 Ibid., p. 273. 40 Cf. Howard, Three Faces of Hermeneutics: An Introduction to Current Theories of Understanding, pp. 151, 152. 41 Gadamer is vague on this and it would take us too far afield to enter into it in any detail. Garrett, ‘Hans-Georg Gadamer and the “Fusion of Horizons”’, p. 396 ff. discusses the question. 42 Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 261. 43 Gadamer develops the theme of the artwork functioning to disclose truth in Part 1 of Truth and Method, p. 5 ff. 44 The term ‘education’ is from Lat. e-ducere, ‘to lead out’. ‘Training’ may have similar implications, as it is inferred to derive from Lat. trahere, ‘to draw, draw forth, extract’ (OED). Education is also ‘edification’, the building (from Lat. ficium, from facere, ‘to make’) of a temple (Lat. aedis). Education builds up the student, so that instruction equates to construction. ‘Instruction’ is from the Lat. struere, ‘to pile up, to build’, that is, to edify.

9 A world of difference 1

E. Akcan, ‘Critical Practice in the Global Era: The Question Concerning “Other” Geographies’, Architectural Theory Review, 7: 1, 2002, 37–58.

2 3

Said, Orientalism. G.C. Spivak, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ in C. Nelson and L. Grossberg (eds), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, Urbana, Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988, 271–313.

4

Akcan, ‘Critical Practice in the Global Era: The Question Concerning “Other” Geographies’, p. 44.

5

Spivak, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ p. 294, cited by Akcan, ‘Critical Practice in the Global Era: The Question Concerning “Other” Geographies’, p. 44.

6

Akcan, ‘Critical Practice in the Global Era: The Question Concerning “Other” Geographies’, p. 44.

7 8

H.K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, London and New York: Routledge, 1994. Ibid., p. 34, quoted by Akcan, ‘Critical Practice in the Global Era: The Question Concerning “Other” Geographies’, p. 45.

9

Bhabha, The Location of Culture, p. 34, quoted by Akcan, ‘Critical Practice in the Global Era: The Question Concerning “Other” Geographies’, p. 45.

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10 For an extended development of this metaphor or excursion and return, see Chapter 13 Random thoughts on the Way. 11

Habermas cites the learning of a foreign language as an example of the hermeneutic notion of the fusion of horizons. See Habermas, ‘A Review of Gadamer’s Truth and Method’.

12 Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 324. 13 Deference is also a deferr-ance, since one is deferring judgement until the other has had her say. Until then there is an assumption of truth. This is the principle behind the legal assumption of innocence until proven guilty.

10 Myth, mandala and metaphor 1

See the extensive lists of works given in A. Snodgrass, The Symbolism of the Stupa, Ithaca, New York: Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University, 1985, and Snodgrass, Architecture, Time and Eternity: Stellar and Temporal Symbolism in Traditional Architecture.

2

See Snodgrass, The Symbolism of the Stupa, p. 177 ff., where this theme is developed in detail and relevant references are given.

3

As embodied, for example, in the Neak Pean temple at Angkor. See ibid., pp. 69 and 72, where further references are given.

4

There is, of course, an impressive body of knowledge on Indian and Southeast Asian Hindu and Buddhist architecture. Knowledge, however, is not necessarily coincident with understanding. The distinction is brought out in Chapters 1 and 8, and in the following.

5

A large number of objectivist explanations of myth have been offered. The early social anthropologists Tylor (E.B. Tylor, Primitive Culture, New York: Harper, 1958) and Frazer (J.G. Frazer, Folklore in the Old Testament, London: Macmillan, 1918) asserted that myths give an explanatory account of natural phenomena; the philologist Max Muller (F.M. Muller, Contributions to the Science of Mythology, London, 1897, F.M. Muller, Lectures on the Science of Religion, New York, 1883) proposed that they are symbolic expressions which function to give an understanding of the movements of the sun; the sociologist Durkheim (E. Durkheim, The Elementary Form of Religious Life, New York, 1961) saw them as expressive of social cohesion and solidarity; for the cultural anthropologist Malinowsky (B. Malinowski, Magic, Science, and Religion and Other Essays, Boston, 1948) they serve to legitimise social customs and practices; Lévi Strauss (‘The Structural Study of Myth’, in C. Lévi Strauss, Structural Anthropology, New York, 1963; C. Lévi Strauss, The Savage Mind, London, 1966), by contrast, described them as manifestations of binary oppositions acting as the structuring principle of meaning; for the psychoanalysts Freud (S. Freud, On Dreams, London, 1952), Jung (C.G. Jung, Psychological Reflections: An Anthology of Writings, New York, 1961) and Kerenyi (C.G. Jung and K. Kerenyi, Introduction to a Science of Mythology, 1949) they express the hidden workings of the subconscious mind; and Cassirer (E. Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), the philosopher of symbolic forms, saw them as a combination of the intellectual and the poetic, descriptions of nature as a dramatic world of actions, forces and conflicting powers and impregnated with emotional qualities.

6

M. Eliade, Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, London: Harvill Press, 1960; M. Eliade, Images and Symbols, London: Harvill Press, 1961; M. Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion, London: Sheed and Ward, 1958.

7

See ‘The Problem of Hermeneutics’, in R. Bultmann, Essays: Philosophical and Theological, London: SCM Press, 1955, p. 234 ff. and 252 ff. For the manner in which Bultmann relates this to the Christian myth, see R. Bultmann, ‘New Testament and Mythology’, in H.W. Bartsch (ed.), Kerygma and Myth: A Theological Debate, London: SPCK, 1953, p. 1 ff., 11 ff., 15 ff. and passim.

8

As a Christian theologian, Bultmann is more particularly speaking of the interpretation of the Bible, but his arguments can be extended to the interpretation of myth in general.

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References to the specifically religious aspects of his argument have been omitted here. For a telling critique of Bultmann’s argument, see J.J. Kockelmans, ‘On Myth and its Relation to Hermeneutics’, Cultural Hermeneutics, 1, 1973, 47–86, p. 77. 9

P. Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil, trans. E. Buchanan, New York: Harper and Row, 1967, p. 347 ff.

10 Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 95 ff. develops the theme. 11

Ibid., Sections 15, 29, 31, 41, 65, 68; Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, Division 1, Ch. 4, ‘Availableness and Ocurrentness’, pp. 60 ff.; and chapter 1.

12 Kockelmans, ‘On Myth and its Relation to Hermeneutics’, p. 68, citing Heidegger, Being and Time, Sections 29, 31, 41, 65, 68 and passim. 13 This is to take ‘world’ both in the wide sense of the total universe, and in the narrower sense of the immediate environment in which we conduct our daily lives. 14 Kockelmans, ‘On Myth and its Relation to Hermeneutics’, p. 69. 15 Ibid., p. 63. 16 On the subject of hermeneutic communities, that is, communities which share a store of interpretational forestructures, see Chapter 5 in this volume, and passim; cf. Fish’s concept of the ‘interpretive community’, Fish, Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric, and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies, p. 141. 17 Kockelmans, ‘On Myth and its Relation to Hermeneutics’, p. 69. 18 Ibid., p. 63. 19 A bibliography on the subject of the hermeneutical circle is given in Ormiston and Schrift, The Hermeneutic Tradition: From Ast to Ricoeur. 20 This ‘seeing’ is itself a metaphor for all modes of understanding. The visual metaphor is so deeply engrained in our thinking and modes of expression as to be almost ineradicable. See Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Gk. metaphora is ‘transfer’ or ‘a carrying across’, but this need not be taken in the sense of carrying an object from one place to another, as implied in the interpretations of metaphor which speak of it as a transfer of the meanings associated with one concept to another concept. Meanings do not adhere to concepts in the manner of one thing adhering to another. As well as ‘to carry’ the Lat. ferre in ‘transfer’ also means, ‘to set in motion, to move across, to flow across, to bring forth, disclose’. These meanings give a more appropriate idea of metaphor as a ‘transfer’ than does the more familiar idea of ‘carrying’. Cf. Snodgrass and Coyne, ‘Models, Metaphors, and the Hermeneutics of Design’, where we failed to understand fully the implications of non-objectivist notions of metaphor. 21 The notion of the metaphoric nature of understanding comes from Heidegger, Being and Time, ¶33 (195–203 and cf. 410). Heelan, Space-Perception and the Philosophy of Science, develops the Heideggerian concepts as they relate to perception. See M. Johnson, Philosophical Perspectives on Metaphor, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1981, for an overview and an annotated bibliography of the philosophy of metaphor. 22 The concept of metaphor-structure owes something to the concept of seeing-as developed by Ludwig Wittgenstein (Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations); and is also dependent on Heidegger’s notions of the ‘as-structure’ and the ‘hermeneutical as’. See Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 200 ff.; Bruns, ‘On the Weakness of Language in the Human Sciences’, pp. 239–262; M.B. Hester, ‘Metaphor and Aspect Seeing’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 25: 1, 1966, 205–212, pp. 205–212; J.C. Weinsheimer, ‘Gadamer’s Metaphorical Hermeneutics’, in H.J. Silverman (ed.), Gadamer and Hermeneutics, New York and London: Routledge, 1991, 181–201; F.E. Sparshott, ‘“As”, or The Limits of Metaphor’, New Literary History, 6: 1, 1974, 75–94. 23 On metaphor as it relates to cognition, see G. Lakoff, Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press,

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1987; M. Johnson, The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Base of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1987; G. Lakoff and M. Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980. 24 The application of the hermeneutical circle to life experience (Erlebnis) is a pivotal concept in the philosophy of Dilthey. Cf. Warnke, Gadarner, Hermeneutics, Tradition and Reason, p. 26 ff. 25 See, e.g., Snodgrass and Coyne, ‘Models, Metaphors, and the Hermeneutics of Design’; D.A. Schön, The Displacement of Concepts, London: Tavistock, 1963; D.A. Schön, ‘Generative Metaphor: A Perspective on Problem-Setting in Social Policy’, in A. Ortony (ed.), Metaphor and Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979, 254–283; M. Hesse, Revolutions and Reconstructions in the Philosophy of Science, Brighton, Sussex: Harvester Press, 1980, p. 111; P. Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor: Multi-disciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning in Language, trans. R. Czerny, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977; P. Ricoeur, ‘Metaphor and the Main Problem of Hermeneutics’, New Literary History, 6: 1, 1974, 95–110; P. Ricoeur, ‘The Metaphysical Process as Cognition, Imagination and Feeling’, in S. Sacks (ed.), On Metaphor, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1979, 141–158; H. Khatchadourian, ‘Symbols and Metaphors’, Southern Journal of Philosophy, 1968, 181–190. 26 Stated in this bald manner, the argument will appear dogmatic and unsubstantiated. The complex arguments and empirical evidence supporting these statements come from disciplines as widely separated as philosophy, linguistics and computer science. The notions involved rely especially on the linguistic theories of Johnson, The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Base of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason; Lakoff, Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind, and Lakoff, Metaphors We Live By. As conceived here, metaphor-structure makes redundant the stand-off between those on the one hand who attempt to deny the metaphorical and its inherent logical contradictions by reducing metaphor to literal statements; and those who, quite on the contrary, say that there are no literal statements, but only live and dead metaphors. These considerations require a lengthy development that is not possible here. See Ricoeur, ‘Metaphor and the Main Problem of Hermeneutics’; Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor: Multi-disciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning in Language, p. 290 ff.; D.E. Rumelhart, ‘Problems with Literal Meanings’, in A. Ortony (ed.), Metaphor and Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979, 78–90; O. Barfield, ‘The Meaning of the Word “Literal”’, in L.C. Knight and B. Cottle (eds), Metaphor and Symbol, London: Butterworths Scientific Publications, 1960, 48–63; C.R. Hausman, Metaphor and Art, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, p. 19 ff.; Schön, The Displacement of Concepts, p. 46 ff.; R. Moran, ‘Seeing and Believing: Metaphor, Image, and Force’, Critical Inquiry, 16, 1989, 87–112; D. Davidson, ‘What Metaphors Mean’, in S. Sacks (ed.), On Metaphor, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1979; D. Bickerton, ‘Prolegomenon to a Linguistic Theory of Metaphor’, Foundations of Language, 5: 1, 1969, 34–52; A. Senberg, ‘Defining Metaphor’, Journal of Philosophy, 60: 21, 1963, 609–622; W. Charlton, ‘Living and Dead Metaphors’, British Journal of Aesthetics, 15: 2, 1975, 172–178; A.N. Katz and J.A. Fodor, ‘The Structure of a Semantic Theory’, Language, 39, 1963, 170–210. To speak of the ‘primordiality’ of metaphor-structure is not to afford it a foundational function. 27 M. Beardsley, ‘Metaphorical Senses’, Nous, 12, 1978, 3–16; I.A. Richards, The Philosophy of Rhetoric, London: Oxford University Press, 1936, Chapters 5 and 6. 28 Snodgrass and Coyne, ‘Models, Metaphors, and the Hermeneutics of Design’. 29 The theme is developed by M. Heidegger, ‘What is Metaphysics?’ Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings, London and Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978, 91–112; Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor: Multi-disciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning in Language.

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30 On the generation of metaphors, see Schön, The Displacement of Concepts; Schön, ‘Generative Metaphor: A Perspective on Problem-Setting in Social Policy’; Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor: Multi-disciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning in Language; etc. 31 Bruns, ‘On the Weakness of Language in the Human Sciences’. The term ‘disclosure’ is used in its Heideggerian sense. See Heidegger, Being and Time, Sections 44, 68, and passim; DiCenso, Hermeneutics and the Disclosure of Truth: A Study in the Work of Heidegger, Gadamer and Ricoeur; M.E. Zimmerman, Heidegger’s Confrontation with Modernity: Technology, Politics and Art, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990, Ch. 14; J.J. Kockelmans, Heidegger on Art and Art Works, Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1985; etc. The dynamics of the ‘is not’ can either be in simultaneous or sequential mode. The hermeneutical circle can be thought of in either way: the inter-referencing of the parts and the whole can be sequential; or they can be thought of in terms of immediacy, in which case it is circular by spatial analogy only. In this latter case, reading, for example, is not a projection forward of an anticipation of the whole which is then, subsequently, referred back into the parts, but involves an immediacy of understanding, just as in hearing a sound we do not first hear it and then ‘work out’ what it was, but understand it to be the cry of a bird or a baby as it happens. What it is and what it is not are recognised simultaneously: it is a bird or a baby, and it is not a jackhammer. 32 Bruns, ‘On the Weakness of Language in the Human Sciences’, p. 252 ff. 33 ‘Imagination’ is here being used in the manner defined by Johnson, The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Base of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason, Ch. 6, ‘Toward a Theory of Imagination’. 34 There is a very large literature on the concept of advaita. See esp. A.K. Coomaraswamy, ‘Vedic Exemplarism’, in R. Lipsey (ed.), Coomaraswamy, Selected Papers 1: Metaphysics, Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1977, 177–197; R. Guénon, An Introduction to the Study of the Hindu Doctrine, London: Luzac, 1945, p. 276 ff.; R. Guénon, Man and His Becoming According to the Vedanta, London: Luzak, 1945; J.A. Taber, Transformative Philosophy: A Study of Sankara, Fichte, and Heidegger, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1983; etc. The doctrine of advaita is not confined to the Vedanta. It is a persistent theme in many aspects of Hindu thought; it also permeates Mahâyâna thinking, as in the doctrines of the non-duality of samsâra and nirvâna (see Madhyamika-sâstra, Ch. 25, Kârika 19: ‘Samsâra is in no way to be distinguished from Nirvâna and Nirvâna is in no way to be distinguished from Samsâra’, etc.) and nifuni (‘two yet not two’) which figures largely in the doctrines of the Shingon, Tendai, Kegon and other Japanese Buddhist sects. For details of the doctrine of non-duality as it figures in the Shingon sect of Japanese Buddhism, see A. Snodgrass, The Matrix and Diamond World Mandalas in Shingon Buddhism, New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan, 1988, Ch. 2, ‘The Esoteric Doctrine of Non-Duality’. 35 On the dependence of meaning on context, see Chapter 1 ‘Architectural hermeneutics’ in this volume. 36 See Snodgrass and Coyne, ‘Models, Metaphors, and the Hermeneutics of Design’. 37 Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. 38 Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil, pp. 3–9, 161–171. 39 Johnson, The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Base of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason, pp. ix–xii, xv, 104. On metaphor in this connection, see Lakoff, Metaphors We Live By; Schön, ‘Generative Metaphor: A Perspective on Problem-Setting in Social Policy’; M.J. Reddy, ‘The Conduit Metaphor – A Case of Frame Conflict in Our Language about Language’, in A. Ortony (ed.), Metaphor and Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979, 284–324; Snodgrass and Coyne, ‘Models, Metaphors, and the Hermeneutics of Design’. 40 See D. Leder, The Absent Body, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1990; Johnson, The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Base of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason.

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41 See Snodgrass, The Symbolism of the Stupa, Ch. 6; Snodgrass, Architecture, Time and Eternity: Stellar and Temporal Symbolism in Traditional Architecture, Ch. 16. 42 See Snodgrass, The Symbolism of the Stupa, passim. 43 Snodgrass, The Matrix and Diamond World Mandalas in Shingon Buddhism, Ch. 3. 44 See, for example, the descriptions given in Snodgrass, The Symbolism of the Stupa, Ch. 6; Snodgrass, Architecture, Time and Eternity: Stellar and Temporal Symbolism in Traditional Architecture, Ch. 16; Snodgrass, The Matrix and Diamond World Mandalas in Shingon Buddhism, passim; M. Saso, Homa Rites and Mandala Meditation in Tendai Buddhism, New Delhi: Indian Academy of Indian Culture and Aditya Prakashan, 1991; and the various references given in those sources. 45 Johnson, The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Base of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason, pp. 18, 19. The following considerations derive mainly from Johnson, and from Lakoff, Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind; and Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By. 46 Johnson, The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Base of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason, p. xx. 47 In passing, they therefore underlie the two procedural forms of activity involved in designing: verbal thinking on the one hand, and the manipulation of images on the other. Most existing accounts of the design process analyse it on the model of grammar and syntax. This overlooks the fact that the greater part of designing proceeds by way of nonverbal mental images. The ‘manipulation’ of mental images follows the same ‘rules’ as language in that both proceed by way of metaphor. One image is seen as another, just as one verbal concept is seen as another. 48 Johnson, The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Base of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason, p. 38. 49 They are akin to the fluid ‘norms’ which govern ethical behaviour, the general actiongoverning ‘rules’ which are only understood in their application. For a development of this concept as it relates to Gadamer’s rehabilitation of Aristotle’s concept of phronesis, ‘practical knowledge’, see Chapter 6, Design assessment, in this volume. 50 Johnson, The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Base of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason, p. 14. 51 The literature on the body in the plan and pile of mandala-derived buildings is extensive. See, for example, G. Tucci, The Theory and Practice of the Mandala, trans. A.H. Brodrick, London: Rider, 1961, Ch. 5, ‘The Mandala in the Human Body’; Snodgrass, The Symbolism of the Stupa, Chapters 6 and 22; Snodgrass, The Matrix and Diamond World Mandalas in Shingon Buddhism, Ch. 15; S. Kramrisch, The Hindu Temple, Calcutta: University of Calcutta Press, 1946; P. Mus, Barabudur: Esquisse d’une histoire du bouddhisme fondée sur la critique archéologique des textes, Hanoi, New York: Arno Press, 1935, reprinted 1978; etc. 52 The mandala is a Hindu–Buddhist version of a symbolic organisation that is ubiquitous and perennial. The concepts embodied in the mandala, the details of its geometrical laying out, and indeed the meaning structures articulated in the myths that accompany it, are not of merely local, but, mutatis mutandis, of worldwide occurrence and significance. The temporal aspects of the symbolism of the mandala are explored in Snodgrass, Architecture, Time and Eternity: Stellar and Temporal Symbolism in Traditional Architecture. This latter study draws examples not only from the mandala forms of India, but from the cognate architectural forms of ancient Greece and Rome, the Near East, medieval Christianity, Islam, China, Africa, the tribal peoples of South America and MesoAmerica. 53 The Brahmanic and Buddhist myths associated with the mandala are given in Snodgrass, The Symbolism of the Stupa.

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54 See ibid., Ch. 2, ‘The Ritual Demarcation of the Stupa Plan’; Snodgrass, Architecture, Time and Eternity: Stellar and Temporal Symbolism in Traditional Architecture, p. 128 ff., and esp. the caption to Fig. 5. Extensive bibliographies on the laying out of the Hindu temple are given in these two sources. On the rituals of laying out of the matrix mandala in Japan, see Snodgrass, Architecture, Time and Eternity: Stellar and Temporal Symbolism in Traditional Architecture, Ch. 12, ‘The Laying Out of the Matrix Mandala’. 55 See the illustration at the start of this chapter. In a further development, the square obtained in this way is divided into a number of smaller squares, giving a grid that determines the nodal points of the plan. It leads too far afield to consider the implications of the grid for the present considerations, but it is susceptible to an analysis similar to the following. See esp. Snodgrass, The Symbolism of the Stupa; Snodgrass, Architecture, Time and Eternity: Stellar and Temporal Symbolism in Traditional Architecture; etc. The symbolic reference is cosmogenetic. Eliade develops this theme. See Eliade, Myths, Dreams and Mysteries; Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion; etc. 56 The mythic correspondences of each of these characteristics is developed in Snodgrass, The Symbolism of the Stupa. 57 Johnson, The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Base of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason, pp. 30, 31. 58 Ibid., p. 38. 59 As one example of this in the context of Japanese myth, see G. Nitschke, ‘Shime, Binding and Unbinding’, Architectural Design (AD), 1974, 747–791. 60 This is a recurrent theme in Eliade’s writings. See M. Eliade, ‘Centre du monde, temple, maison’, Le symbolisme cosmique des monuments religieuses, Rome: Serie Orientale Roma, 1957, 60 ff; Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion, Ch. X, ‘Sacred Places: Temple, Palace, Centre of the World’; M. Eliade, Cosmos and History: The Myth of the Eternal Return, London: Sheed and Ward, 1959, pp. 9 and 18; etc. Cf. Snodgrass, The Symbolism of the Stupa, p. 14 ff.; P. Wheatley, The Pivot of the Four Quarters, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1971, pp. 418, 419; T.J.J. Altizer, Mircea Eliade and the Dialectic of the Sacred, Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1963, p. 125 ff. 61 Snodgrass, The Symbolism of the Stupa, Ch. 2. 62 Ibid., p. 14. Later parts of the same indicate how the ritual of laying out the mandala is a mimesis of the bounding of the cosmos in illud tempore. 63 Johnson, The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Base of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason, pp. 124, 125. 64 Snodgrass, The Symbolism of the Stupa, Ch. 3, ‘The Symbolism of the Centre’, where a large number of references are given. 65 Ibid., p. 21. 66 See Reddy, ‘The Conduit Metaphor – A Case of Frame Conflict in Our Language about Language’. 67 See Snodgrass, The Symbolism of the Stupa, esp. Ch. 18; and Snodgrass, The Matrix and Diamond World Mandalas in Shingon Buddhism, Chapters 16, 35, 36, etc.; Tucci, The Theory and Practice of the Mandala, Ch. 2. 68 Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy. 69 J. Gibson, The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems, London: Allen & Unwin, 1968, Ch. 6, ‘The Haptic System and its Components’. 70 The theme of visual balance is developed in depth by R. Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception: The Psychology of the Creative Eye, Berkeley: University of California, 1974. See especially Ch. 1, ‘Balance’. A summary is given by Johnson, The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Base of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason, p. 74 ff. 71 For language structures based on the concept of argument tracing to the scales metaphor, see Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By.

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72 See Lakoff, Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind, Ch. 20, ‘Mathematics as a Cognitive Activity’, where he traces such concepts as mathematical equivalence (the ‘equals’ sign) to the balance metaphor. 73 Johnson, The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Base of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason, p. 80 ff. Schön, The Displacement of Concepts, p. 92 ff., has collected a large number of examples of concepts based on the scales metaphor. 74

Snodgrass, The Symbolism of the Stupa, p. 23.

75 Ibid., Chapters 4–8. 76 If this sounds incompatible with the anti-metaphysical bias of both post-modernism and Mahâyâna Buddhism it should be remembered that Buddhism, which is radically antifoundationalist, does not deny the need to use metaphysical modes of thought in everyday concerns, but shows that there are no stable grounds for taking these as absolutes. 77 As the author of several books on the mandala, Snodgrass is well aware of its labyrinthine complexities of meaning, and is not likely to endorse reductive understandings.

11 Translating tradition 1

See K. Kurokawa, Rediscovering Japanese Space, New York and Tokyo: Weatherhill, 1988; and K. Kurokawa, Intercultural Architecture: The Philosophy of Symbiosis, London: Academy Editions, 1991. Aspects of the ideas collected together in these two books also appear in a number of articles, including K. Kurokawa, ‘Toward a Rhyzome World or “Chaosmos”’, Japan Architect, 63: 376, 1988, 8–11; K. Kurokawa, ‘Toward the Evocation of Meaning’, Japan Architect, 64: 382, 1989, 6–13; K. Kurokawa, ‘An Architecture of Symbiosis: The Twofaced God Janus’, Japan Architect, 61: 354, 1986, 40–42; K. Kurokawa, ‘The Philosophy of Symbiosis: From Internationalism to Interculturalism’, Japan Architect, 60: 334, 1985, 12–16. Since writing the original draft of this chapter Snodgrass has had second thoughts about Kurokawa’s thinking. In his book (K. Kurokawa, Each One a Hero: The Philosophy of Symbiosis, Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1997), there are disturbing signs of a support for the ‘Asian values’ espoused by certain prominent Malaysian leaders.

2

Kurokawa, Rediscovering Japanese Space, p. 19; Kurokawa, ‘The Philosophy of Symbiosis: From Internationalism to Interculturalism’.

3

The ‘New Wave’ is named for an exhibition that toured the United States in late 1978, entitled ‘A New Wave of Japanese Architecture’. It included works by Itsuko Hasegawa, Toyo Ito, Tekefumi Aida, Hiroshi Hara, Tadao Ando, Kiko Mozuno, Hiromi Fuji and Kazunari Sakamoto. At the time of that exhibition, Ada Louise Huxtable (A.L. Huxtable, The Japanese New Wave. The New York Times, 14 January, New York, 1979) remarked, ‘if there is an active avant-garde today, this is it’. For a discussion of the New Wave, see B. Bognar, Contemporary Japanese Architecture, New York: van Nostrand Reinhard, 1985; N. Kawazoe, Contemporary Japanese Architecture, Tokyo: Kokusai Koryu Kikin (Japan Foundation), 1973.

4

For the New Wave critique of modern Japanese society, the city and architecture, see H. Yatsuka, ‘Architecture and the Urban Desert: a Critical Introduction to Japanese Architecture After Modernism’, Oppositions, 23, 1984, 23; H. Yatsuka, ‘An Architecture Floating on the Sea of Signs: Three Generations of Contemporary Japanese Architecture’, Architectural Design, 58: 5–6, 1988, 6–13; K. Shinohara, ‘Chaos and Machine’, Japan Architect, 63: 373, 1988, 25–32; K. Kobayashi, ‘Where to Go, What to Fight?’ Japan Architect, 63: 379/380, 1988, 94–96; A. Katagi, ‘Against the Consumption of Architecture’, Japan Architect, 63: 379/80, 1988, 76–77; B. Bognar, ‘Archaeology of a Fragmented Landscape’, Architectural Design, 58: 5–6, 1988, 14–25; K. Ishii, ‘The Intellectual and Today’s Urban Hopelessness’, Japan Architect, 55, 277 (May, 1980): 5.

5

Kurokawa, Rediscovering Japanese Space, pp. 22, 23.

6

This is particularly so in the work of Tadao Ando. See T. Ando, ‘From the Periphery to Architecture’, Japan Architect, 57, 1982, 12–20; T. Ando, ‘New Relations Between the Space

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and the Person’, Japan Architect, 52: Oct/Nov, 1977, 44–46; T. Ando, ‘A Concrete Teahouse and a Veneer Teahouse’, Japan Architect, 61: 354, 1986, 29; T. Ando, ‘The Wall as Territorial Delineation’, Japan Architect, 53, 1978, 12–13; H. Watanabe, ‘Tadao Ando – The Architecture of Denial’, Japan Architect, 57, 1982, 50–55; and cf. K. Frampton, Tadao Ando – Buildings, Projects, Writings. New York: Rizzoli, 1984. 7

For discussions of these strategies, see I. Hasegawa, ‘3 Projects’, Japan Architect, 61: 355/6, 1986, 54–55; I. Hasegawa, ‘Architecture as Second Nature’, Japan Architect, 64: 391/2, 1989; H. Hara, ‘A Style for the Year 2001’, Japan Architect, 59, 1984, 39–40; L. Breslin, ‘From the Savage to the Nomad: Critical Interventions in Contemporary Japanese Architecture’, Architectural Design, 58: 5/6, 1988, 27–31; T. Aida, ‘Architecture, Fluctuation and Monument’, Japan Architect, 64: 382, 1989, 18–21; T. Ito, ‘Architecture Sought After by Android’, Japan Architect, 63: 374, 1988, 9–13; B. Bognar, ‘Architecture, Nature and a New Technological Landscape – Itsuko Hasegawa’s Works in the 80s’, Architectural Design, 61: 3–4, 1991, 33–37. On the concept of ‘primary landscape’, see F. Maki, ‘An Environmental Approach to Architecture’, Japan Architect, 48, 1973; H. Yatsuka, ‘An Architecture Floating on the Sea of Signs: Three Generations of Contemporary Japanese Architecture’.

8

Wakon yôsei is a shortened form of Tôyô no dôtoku, Seiyô no gakugei, coined by Sakuma Shôzan. It summed up his belief that the way to save the spirit of the Japanese in the face of Western demands was to adopt the superior technology of the West, while at the same time preserving traditional modes of thought. R. Tsunoda, W.T. de Bary and D. Keene, Sources of Japanese Tradition, New York: Columbia University Press, 1958, p. 603 ff.

9

For example, see Rogers and Gumuchdjian, Cities for a Small Planet; R. Rogers and A. Power, Cities for a Small Country, London: Faber and Faber, 2000.

10 For an elaboration of the implications for theories of information technology see Coyne, Designing Information Technology in the Postmodern Age: From Method to Metaphor. 11

Zimmerman, Heidegger’s Confrontation with Modernity: Technology, Politics and Art, pp. 200, 201.

12 Leibniz, ‘Monadology’, p. 272. 13 M. Heidegger, Identity and Difference, trans. J. Stambaugh, New York: Harper and Row, 1969, pp. 34, 35. 14 M. Heidegger, Discourse on Thinking, trans. J.M. Anderson and E.H. Freund, New York: Harper and Row, 1966, p. 56; H.L. Dreyfus, ‘On the Ordering of Things: Being and Power in Heidegger and Foucault’, Southern Journal of Philosophy, 28 Supplement, 1989, 83–96, p. 88 ff. 15 M. Heidegger, ‘The Turning’, Research in Phenomenology, 1, 1971, 3–16, pp. 5, 6. 16 M. Heidegger, ‘What is Metaphysics?’ in W. Brock (ed.), Existence and Being, Chicago: Regnery Co., 1949, 325–361, pp. 343, 344. 17 It would be over-hasty to identify Heidegger’s Nothingness with Buddhist Emptiness. 18 Heidegger, Discourse on Thinking, p. 54. 19 M. Heidgger, ‘The Way Back into the Ground of Metaphysics’, in W. Kaufmann (ed.), Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, Cleveland: Meridian Books, 1956, 206–221, p. 210. Cf. J.D. Caputo, The Mystical Element in Heidegger’s Thought, New York: Fordham University Press, 1986, p. 186. 20 Heidegger, Discourse on Thinking, p. 53; cf. Heidegger, Identity and Difference, p. 40. 21 R.J. Bernstein, ‘Heidegger’s Silence? Ethos and Technology’, in R.J. Bernstein (ed.), The New Constellation, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991, 79–141. 22 A number of writers have pointed out the proximity of Heidegger’s thinking and the teachings of Buddhism. Heidegger entered into a direct dialogue with several aspects of Buddhist thinking. M. Heidegger, On the Way to Language, trans. P.D. Hertz, New York: Harper and Row, 1971 (see esp. p. 19), is an exchange between ‘the Inquirer’ and a Japanese, Shuzo Kuki. On Heidegger and Zen see Caputo, The Mystical Element

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in Heidegger’s Thought, pp. 203–217; A. Borgmann, ‘The Question of Heidegger and Technology: A Critical Review of the Literature’, Philosophy Today, 31: 2/4, 1987, 97–177, pp. 147–151; P. Kreeft, ‘Zen in Heidegger’s Gelassenheit’, International Philosophical Quarterly, 11: 4, 1971, 521–545; L. Leonard, ‘Toward an Ontological Analysis of Detachment’, Philosophy Today, 15: 4, 1972, 268–280; C. Olson, ‘The Leap of Thinking: A Comparison of Heidegger and the Zen Master Dogen’, Philosophy Today, 25: 1, 1981, 55–62; R. Schürmann, ‘Trois penseurs de délaissement: Maitre Eckhart, Heidegger, Suzuki’, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 12, 13: 4, 1, 1974, 1975, 455–477, 443–460; J. Steffney, ‘Man and Being in Heidegger and Zen Buddhism’, Philosophy Today, 25: 1, 1981, 56–74; T. Umehara, ‘Heidegger and Buddhism’, Philosophy East and West, 20: 3, 1970, 271–281. Philosophy East and West, 20, 3 (July 1970) is given over to the proceedings of a conference on ‘Heidegger and Eastern Thought’, held at the University of Hawaii in 1969. A number of papers stress the affinity of Heidegger’s thought and Buddhism. Cf. also G. Parkes, Heidegger and Asian Thought, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1987. The proximity of Heidegger’s thought and certain aspects of Buddhism, however, is to be taken with reservations. It would be a distortion of both Buddhism and Heidegger to suggest that they coincide. It is not to be imagined, for example, that Heidegger’s ‘the Nothing’ (das Nichts) can be identified with Buddhist Emptiness. There may be proximity, but not coincidence. Heidegger refers to the Thomist notion of ‘analogy of proportionality’ when he specifies the relationship his thought has to theology (cf. James Robinson, ‘The German Discussion’, in J. Robinson, ‘The German Discussion’, in J.M. Robinson and J.B. Cobb (eds), The Later Heidegger and Theology, New York: Harper and Row, 1963, 42–43. The reference is to Aquinas’s distinction of analogy of proportion (analogia proportionis) and analogy of proportionality (analogia proportionalitatis). The former is the analogy between two things that have a direct relationship. To say ‘the brain is a computer’ is to assert that there is a direct relationship between them, and that one works just like the other. Analogy of proportionality, by contrast, is the analogy between two things that are not directly related but share a certain ‘similarity of proportions’, as in the metaphor ‘Juliet is the sun’. This is a ‘proportion of proportions’ or a ‘relation of relations’. Heidegger has suggested that the ‘ratio’ of his notions of Being and thinking is not directly proportional to that of God and thinking conducted within faith, in the form Being : thinking = God : thinking within faith, but nevertheless has an indirect proportionality, in the form Being : thinking :: God : thinking within faith. For a development of this theme, see Caputo, The Mystical Element in Heidegger’s Thought, p. 143 ff. A similar analogy of proportionality exists between Heidegger’s notions of Being and letting-be on the one side and the Buddhist notions of Emptiness and non-action (mui ) on the other, in the form Being : letting-be :: Emptiness : non-action. 23 ‘Non-grasping’ is a basic tenet of both the Theravâda and the Mahâyâna. The notion of ‘letting-be’ in the Mahâyâna is a development of the Theravâda concept of non-grasping. 24 See Nâgârjuna, esp. the Mûla-mâdhyamika-kârikâs and the Mahâ-prajñâpâramitâ-sâstra, cited in T.R.V. Murti, The Central Philosophy of Buddhism: A Study of the Mâdhyamika System, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1955; V. Fatone, The Philosophy of Nâgârjuna, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1981; K.V. Ramanan, Nâgârjuna’s Philosophy As Presented in the Mahâ-Prajñâpâramitâ-Sâstra, Rutland, Vermont and Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle, 1966; R.H. Robinson, Early Mâdhyamika in India and China, Madison, Milwaukee: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967; and for Candrakîrti’s Commentary on Nâgârjuna, see M. Sprung, Lucid Exposition of the Middle Way: The Essential Chapters from the Prasannapadâ of Candrakîrti, Boulder: Prajñâ Press, 1979; K. Bhattacharya, ‘The Dialectical Method of Nâgârjuna’, Journal of Indian Philosophy, 1, 1971, 217–261; C. Crittenden, ‘Everyday Reality as Fiction: A Mâdhyamika Interpretation’, Journal of Indian Philosophy, 9, 1981, 323–333; D.D. Daye, ‘Japanese Rationalism, Mâdhyamika, and Some Uses of

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Rationalism’, Philosophy East and West, 24: 3, 1974, 363–368; F.J. Hoffman, ‘Rationality in Early Four Fold Logic’, Journal of Indian Philosophy, 10, 1982, 309–337; K.K. Inada, Nâgârjuna: A Translation of his Mûlamâdhyamikakârikâ, Tokyo: Hokuseido, 1970; J. May, ‘On Mâdhyamika Philosophy’, Journal of Indian Philosophy, 21: 1, 1971, 233–234; G.C. Nayak, ‘The Mâdhyamika Attack on Essentialism’, Philosophy East and West, 29: 4, 1979, 479–490; K. Nishida, Intelligibility and the Philosophy of Nothingness, Honolulu: East West Center, 1958; K. Nishitani, ‘Emptiness and History’, Eastern Buddhist, n.s., 12: 1, 1979, 49–82; F.J. Streng, Emptiness: A Study of Religious Meaning, New York: Abingdon, 1967; F.J. Streng, ‘The Process of Ultimate Transformation in Nâgârjuna’s Mâdhyamika’, Eastern Buddhist, 11: 2, 1978, 12–32; F.J. Streng, ‘Metaphysics, Negative Dialectic, and the Expression of the Inexpressible’, Philosophy East and West, 25: 4, 1975, 429–447; F. and C.D. Tola, ‘Nâgârjuna’s Conception of “Voidness”’, Journal of Indian Philosophy, 9, 1981, 273–282; I. Waldo, ‘Nâgârjuna and Analytic Philosophy’, Philosophy East and West, 25: 3, 1975, 281–290. 25 Nâgârjuna is not attempting to replace the logic he dismantles with some alternative. He is simply pointing out that logic cannot sustain itself (anticipating Kurt Gödel’s proof of the same: K. Gödel, On Formally Unprovable Propositions, New York: Basic Books, 1962). 26 In the Mahâyâna view, Nâgârjuna’s demolition of logic and reason is only the first step on the pathway into Nothingness. Accordingly, Kôbô Daishi, in his Ten Stages of Mind (see the Jûjûshinron, Taishô 77, no. 2425) places Nâgârjuna’s dismantling of logic at only the seventh of the ten stages, at the stage of the ‘provisional Mahâyâna’, so called because it is only the beginning of the deconstructive process. See Snodgrass, The Matrix and Diamond World Mandalas in Shingon Buddhism, p. 7 ff. 27 See A. Bloom, Shinran’s Doctrine of Pure Grace, Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1965; D.T. Suzuki, Shin Buddhism: Japan’s Major Religious Contribution to the West, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1970; D.T. Suzuki, Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1957, Section 2. 28 Suzuki, Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist, pp. 154, 155. 29 Some residue of this meaning still remains in the English word ‘nature’, since it derives from the Latin nasci, ‘to be born’. Nature in this kenning is a birth-giving or generating force. 30 Shinran, ‘Mattôshôô’, Shinran Shôgyô Zenshô, Kyoto: Kôkyô Shoin, 1953, 663–664. For translations see Shinran, The Collected Works of Shinran, trans. D. Hirota, Kyoto: Jôdo Shinshû Hongwanji-ha, 1997, I, p. 530; Bloom, Shinran’s Doctrine of Pure Grace, pp. 43, 44; J.C. Dobbins, Jôdo Shinshû: Shin Buddhism in Medieval Japan, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1989, p. 45; Shinran, Mattôshôô, trans. U. Yoshifumi, Kyoto, 1978, p. sec. V, cited in Ô. Ryôgi, ‘Nietzsche’s Conception of Nature from an EastAsian Point of View’, in G. Parkes (ed.), Nietzsche and Asian Thought, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991, 200–213, p. 207. Cf. Shôzômatsu wasan, Shinran Shôgyô Zenshô, II, p. 530, where the same passage appears with slight modifications. The passage is discussed by T. Karasawa, Shinran no Sekai (Shinran’s World), Tokyo: Kobundo, 1953, pp. 46–56. 31 Honpushô, ‘originally unproduced’, corresponds to Skt. âdyanutpâda. ‘The ultimate reality of things is a tranquil state in which nothing comes into existence and nothing disappears.’ H. Inagaki, A Dictionary of Japanese Buddhist Terms, Kyoto: Nagata Bonshodo, 1985, p. 110, s.v. Honpushô. 32 H. Tanabe, Philosophy as Metanoetics, trans. T. Yoshinori, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.The term zangedô means ‘the way of repentance’, and the book is confessional, expressing Tanabe’s regret that his philosophical talents did not equip him to see through Japanese militarism with greater clarity. Tanabe and other members of the Kyoto School of philosophy have been severely criticised for their supposed nationalistic and ‘fascist’ leanings during the Pacific War. On the other hand, this criticism has itself

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been subjected to a scathing criticism by the new revisionists, both Japanese and Western. Their arguments are compelling. See esp. D. Williams, Defending Japan’s Pacific War: The Kyoto School philosophers and post-White power, London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004; G. Parkes, ‘The Putative Fascism of the Kyoto School and the Political Correctness of the Modern Academy’, Philosophy East and West, 47: 3, 1997, 305–336. Williams and Parkes direct their attacks on materials contained in such works as J.W. Heisig and J. Maraldo, Rude Awakenings: Zen, the Kyoto School and the Question of Nationalism. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1995; T. Najita and H.D. Harootunian, ‘Japanese Revolt Against the West and Cultural Criticism of the Twentieth Century’, in P. Duus (ed.), The Cambridge History of Japan, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, 711–774; H. Harootunian, Overcome by Modernity: History, Culture and Community in Interwar Japan, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2000. Williams also discusses at some length Heidegger’s ‘Farias Affair’, and shows major flaws in the arguments of the witch hunters. 33 Tanabe, Philosophy as Metanoetics, p. 2. 34 Ibid., pp. 26, 27. 35 The painting can also be done on silk, but the same conditions apply. 36 Under the pervasive influence of D.T. Suzuki’s works on Zen Buddhism, there is a popular understanding that ‘no-mind’ is a Zen term, and that the Japanese traditional arts are closely, or even exclusively, associated with the Zen sect. Both the term and the practices associated with it are the common property of all the Japanese Buddhist schools. They pervade Japanese culture generally, and not only Zen culture. On ‘no-mind’ see D.T. Suzuki, The Zen Doctrine of No-Mind, London: Rider, 1958; D.T. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, 3rd series, London: Rider, 1958; etc. 37 It is not suggested that all traditional Japanese arts are produced spontaneously. There are many that fully comply with the relationship of episteme and techne: they are pre-planned in detail, and production is under complete control at every moment. For an example of a Japanese art requiring total technical control at every stage of production, see R. Zeeman, ‘Appendix: The Technique of Cloisonné Enamel’, in O. Impey and M. Fairley (eds), The Dragon King of the Sea: Japanese Decorative Art of the Meiji Period from the John R. Young Collection, Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 1991, 104–109. 38 See Zeami, On the Art of the Nô Drama: The Major Treatises of Zeami, trans. J.T. Rimer and M. Yamazaki, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984, p. 116. This translation gives myô as ‘charm’, which is one of the meanings of this polysemic word, but gives no hint of the connotations it carries in Buddhism. 39 W.E. Soothill and L. Hodous, A Dictionary of Chinese Buddhist Terms, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1937, give its Sanskrit equivalents as su, mañju and sûkshma. ‘Su means good, excellent, surpassing, beautiful, fine, easy. Sat means existing, real, good. Sûkshma means beautiful, lovely, charming.’ It is interpreted in Sino-Japanese as fukashigi, ‘beyond thought or discussion’; zettai, ‘special, outstanding, supreme’; muhi, ‘incomparable’; and shômishinen, ‘subtle and profound’. 40 Cf. Sasaki, ‘Poetics of Intransitivity’, p. 20. 41 For an excellent history of the Mingei movement and a discussion of its ‘philosophy’ see C. Ajioka, ‘Early Mingei and Development of Japanese Crafts, 1920s–1940s‘, PhD Thesis, Canberra, Australia: Australian National University, 1995. 42 ‘Skill’ comes from a word meaning ‘to distinguish’. 43 See K. Sasaki, ‘Poetics of Intransivity’, in M.F. Marra (ed.), Japanese Hermeneutics: Current Debates on Aesthetics and Interpretation, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002, 17–24. Sasaki gives a number of pertinent references in Japanese, and gives many examples of the manner in which intransivity functions in the Japanese language. 44 See the long list of meanings given in A.N. Nelson, The Modern Reader’s Japanese-English Character Dictionary, Rutland, Vermont and Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle, 1962, etc.

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45 See, for example, M.F. Marra, A History of Modern Japanese Aesthetics, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2001, which contains an extensive bibliography of materials in Japanese and English; M.F. Marra, Japanese Hermeneutics: Current Debates on Aesthetics and Interpretation, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002; S. Odin, Artistic Detachment in Japan and the West: Psychic Distance in Comparative Aesthetics, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2001. This latter applies Kant’s notion of ‘distanciation’ and ‘artistic detachment’ as prerequisites for artistic creation and appreciation. Odin’s thesis is almost the exact inverse of the one presented here. 46 Kurokawa, Rediscovering Japanese Space, p. 24.

12 Thinking through the gap 1

The etymological dictionaries say that it is actually the moon (tsuki, 月) that should be shown. Thus Creel, Chang and Rudolph say, ‘originally a moon shining through the leaves of a double door. The form which substitutes sun arose later, and is still called ‘vulgar’, but is very commonly used’ H.G. Creel, C. Tsung-Ch’ien and R.C. Rudolph, Literary Chinese by the Inductive Method, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1938, pp. 218, 219. The etymological analyses of the Chinese characters in the following are based on Creel, Tsung-Ch’ien and Rudolph, Literary Chinese by the Inductive Method; L. Wieger, Chinese Characters: Their Origin, Etymology, History, Classification and Signification, trans. L. Davrout, New York: Dover, 1965; B. Karlgren, Analytic Dictionary of Chinese and Sino-Japanese, Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Guethner, 1923; G. Wilder and J. Ingram, Analysis of Chinese Characters, Peking: North China Union Language School, 1923; K. Masuda, New Japanese–English Dictionary, Tokyo: Kenkyusha, 1974; J.R. De Roo, 2001 Kanji, Tokyo: Bonjinsha, 1982.

2

See H. Engel, The Japanese House: A Tradition for Contemporary Architecture, Vermont and Tokyo: Routledge and Charles E. Tuttle, 1974, p. 241 ff.

3

For the technical details concerning the ken and how it influences the standardisation and prefabrication of building components, see ibid., p. 54 ff.

4 5

‘Pose’ comes from Latin pausare, ‘to pause’, and relates to ponere, ‘to place’. This is the basis for an extended philosophical disquisition by Tetsurô Watsuji on the nature of society and communality. See J.C. Maraldo, ‘Between Individual and Communal, Subject and Object, Self and Other: Mediating Tetsurô Watsuji‘s Hermeneutics’, in Michael F. Marra (ed.), Japanese Hermeneutics: Current Debates on Aesthetics and Interpretation, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002, 76–86; W.R. LaFleur, ‘Buddhist Emptiness in the Ethics and Aesthetics of Tetsurô Watsuji’, Religious Studies, 14, 1978.

6

H. Isozaki (ed.), MA: Space–Time in Japan, New York: Cooper-Hewitt Museum, n.d., p. 13. In parenthesis, it is somewhat ironic to note that every item in his exhibition demonstrated spatial and formal relations but with no hint of how time enters into the equation. This is what might be called reverse Orientalism, in which the Asian other (re)presents itself in ways that accord with Western expectations.

7

R.B. Pilgrim, ‘Intervals (Ma) in Space and Time: Foundations for a Religio-Aesthetic Paradigm in Japan’, in C.W.-H. Fu and S. Heine (eds), Japan in Traditional and Postmodern Perspectives, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995, 55–80; Isozaki (ed), MA: Space–Time in Japan; G. Nitschke, ‘Ma: The Japanese Sense of Place’, Architectural Design (AD), 1966, 117–156; K. Kurokawa, ‘A Culture of Greys’, in T. Sesoka (ed.), The I-Ro-Ha of Japan, Tokyo: Cosmo Public Relations Corp., 1979, 9, 17; K. Kurokawa, ‘Rikyu Grey and the Art of Ambiguity’, Japan Architect, 266, 1979, 26–56; Ching-yu Chang, ‘Japanese Spatial Conception’, Japan Architect, 59, 324 (April, 1984): 62–8 (a monthly essay in eleven parts plus an afterword 1984–1985).

8

Pilgrim, ‘Intervals (Ma) in Space and Time: Foundations for a Religio-Aesthetic Paradigm in Japan’, p. 27.

297

Notes

9

See I.E.K. Bell, ‘Interpreting Japan in Australia, 1870s–1970s’, PhD, School of Architecture, Landscape and Visual Arts, University of Western Australia, 2003.

10 R. Magliola, Derrida on the Mend, West Lafeyette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 1984, p. 12; and also see R. Magliola, Phenomenolgy and Literature, West Lafeyette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 1977, pp. 71, 72. In the former, Magliola is discussing the Japanese notion of the container as it bears on Derrida’s deconstruction of the relationship of signifier and signified. 11

Or ‘penetrated’, since the character 入 represents the penetration of roots into the earth. ‘Receptacle’, from receptio, ‘receive’, carries some of the overtones of meaning of yôki, discussed in the following.

12 The symbolic conflation of mouth, cave, sky-dome and world recurs in many cultures. It is reflected in the similarity of the French word monde, ‘world’, and German mund, ‘mouth’. For the Roman mundus in this connection, see Snodgrass, Architecture, Time and Eternity: Stellar and Temporal Symbolism in Traditional Architecture, p. 238 ff. 13 Creel et al. suggest that the dog is there to guard the vessels; less elegantly, Wieger says it is there to lick the vessels clean. The present-day version of the character has replaced ‘dog’ (犬) with ‘great’ (大). 14 Remembering that in several traditions, including Buddhism, ‘ether’ and ‘space’ are synonymous. 15 Lao-tzu, Tao Te Ching: The Book of the Way and its Virtue, trans. J.J.L. Duyvendak, London: John Murray, 1954, Ch. 11. This is only one of numerous translations of this text (even Heidegger started his own translation, aided by a Chinese scholar). Each version brings out different aspects of the tightly woven and concentrated meanings of its epigrammatic verses. 16 Ibid., p. 40. 17 Lao-tzu, Tao Tê Ching, trans. Ch‘u. Ta-Kao, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1959, p. 27. Cf. p. 40. 18 D.L. McMahan, Empty Vision: Metaphor and Imagery in Mahâyâna Buddhism, London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002, p. 76; cf. E. Conze, Buddhist Thought in India, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1967, pp. 164, 165. 19 Ratnagunasamcayagâtha-prajñâpâramitâ VII, 1. 20 Conze, Buddhist Thought in India, p. 164. 21 Ratnagunasamcayagâtha-prajñâpâramitâ II, 9–10. 22 Ashtasâhasrikâ-prajñâpâramitâ-sûtra, p. 12 (R 24). 23 Ashtasâhasrikâ-prajñâpâramitâ-sûtra, pp. 139, 40 (R 297–298). For these and other comparisons, see McMahan, Empty Vision: Metaphor and Imagery in Mahâyâna Buddhism, pp. 78, 79. 24 An assimilation that connects it to the vault of the sky, the palate of the mouth, and to the world. See note 12 above. 25 See H. Nakamura, Ways of Thinking of Eastern Peoples: India, China, Tibet, Japan, trans. P.P. Wiener, Honolulu, Hawaii: East-West Center Press, 1964, p. 177 ff. 26 The Hannya-haramitta-shin-gyô. See D.S. Lopez, Elaborations on Emptiness: Uses of the Heart Sûtra, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996; E. Conze, ‘The Prajñâpâramitâhrdaya-sûtra’, Thirty Years of Buddhist Studies, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1968, 148–167; J. Silk, The Heart Sutra in Tibetan: A Critical Edition of Recension A and Recension B of the Kanjur Text, Wien: Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien Universität Wien, 1994. The word used for ‘form’ in this is shiki (色). An analysis of this character reveals meanings that have little correspondence with the English word ‘form’. In its everyday connotations shiki is ‘colour’, and it is only in translations of Buddhist texts and as a technical term that it is rendered into English as ‘form’. In the Buddhist texts it translates the Sanskrit word rûpa, which is ‘colour’ but also ‘appearanc’, and hence,

298

Notes

by remotion, ‘form’. The character shiki depicts a flush on the face, combining the sign for ‘man’ with that for ‘seal’ or ‘sign’ (卩): when the face colours it is the sign of inward emotion (and hence shiki is also ‘lust, lewdness’); it is the outward appearance, the look of the thing, which is the indication of an inner state, of something that lies within. 27 This is a theme that can be developed at some length, but involves an exegesis of technical terms. It is probably inappropriate to introduce these here. 28 Wieger, Chinese Characters: Their Origin, Etymology, History, Classification and Signification, p. 36. 29 This means that the term mushin (無心), recurrent in the Buddhist literature, is not merely ‘no mind’ but rather something like the mind wherein a clearing has been made to allow the light to shine. 30 See note 60 below. 31 On zero, see K. Karatani, Architecture as Metaphor: Language, Number, Money, trans. S. Kohso, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995, p. 37 ff. 32 McMahan, Empty Vision: Metaphor and Imagery in Mahâyâna Buddhism, discusses how notions of space enter into Buddhist thinking and imagery. 33 Ibid., p. 74. 34 Conze, Buddhist Thought in India, pp. 164, 165; cf. McMahan, Empty Vision: Metaphor and Imagery in Mahâyâna Buddhism, p. 77. 35 Coomaraswamy shows that passage through the Sun Door is a recurrent and ubiquitous theme in myths. The Sundoor, for example, is identified with the Symplegades, the ‘crashing rocks’, the miraculous gate that ‘divides the familiar Here from the unknown Beyond’. The clashing rocks are homologues of the leaves of the Golden Gate of the Janua Coeli, which are the fiery jaws of Death. By its movements the Sun shining through the doorway measures out (mâ) the six directions of space, being itself the seventh ray. See ‘The Sundoor and Related Motifs’, in R. Lipsey, Coomaraswamy, Selected Papers: 1: Traditional Art and Symbolism, Bollingen Series, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977, which includes four of A.K. Coomarawamy’s essays on the subject: ‘The Symbolism of the Dome’ (pp. 415–458); ‘Pâli kannika: Circular Roof-plate’ (pp. 459–464); Svayamâtrnnâ: Janua Coeli’ (pp. 465–520); and ‘Symplegades’ (pp. 521–544). See also Snodgrass, The Symbolism of the Stupa, p. 268 ff.; and A. Snodgrass, ‘Introduction’, A.K. Coomaraswamy: Le Porte Soleil, Paris: Gallimard, 2005, which is a French translation of Coomaraswamy’s writings on architecture. On the polarity of opposites, see Coomaraswamy, ‘The Tantric Doctrine of Divine Bi-unity’, in R. Lipsey, Coomaraswamy, Selected Papers: 2. Metaphysics, Bollingen Series, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977, pp. 231–240. 36 See S. Mochizuki, Bukkyôdaijiten (Encyclopaedia of Buddhism), Tokyo: Sekai Seiten Kankô Kyôkai, 1968, p. 4020 ff., s.v. Nigabyakudô. Compare with this the crossing of the Red Sea to the Promised Land. 37 This is the recurrent theme of the Mahâyâna, finding its first systematic development in the Mâdhyamika of Nâgârjuna, who showed the intrinsic illogicalities and self-contradiction of every affirmation, negation, simultaneous affirmation and negation, and in the denial of both affirmation and negation. There is an extensive literature on this subject. See, for example, Nâgârjuna, Mûlamadhyamikakârikâ (Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way), in T. Stcherbatsky, The Conception of Buddhist Nirvana, Leningrad: Acadamy of Sciences of the USSR, 1927; Kenneth K. Inada, Nâgârjuna: Mûlamadhyamikakârikâ with an Introductory Essay, Tokyo: Hokuseido, 1970; F.J. Streng, ‘Fundamentals of the Middle Way’, Emptiness, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1967, which is an appendix to Streng, Emptiness: A Study of Religious Meaning; Murti, The Central Philosophy of Buddhism: A Study of the Mâdhyamika System, p. 129 ff.; Y. Sôgen, Systems of Buddhist Thought, Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1912, p. 199 ff.; Magliola, Derrida on the Mend, p. 104 ff.; etc. Cf. note 24 in Chapter 11 (Translating tradition).

299

Notes

38 Pilgrim, ‘Intervals (Ma) in Space and Time: Foundations for a Religio-Aesthetic Paradigm in Japan’, p. 22. 39 See Mochizuki, Bukkyôdaijiten (Encyclopaedia of Buddhism), p. 1024, s.v. Konshin no mida; and p. 4904, s.v. Yuishin-jôdo. 40 Here again, an examination of the kanji used to convey these concepts is revealing. The character for ‘middle’, chû (中), shows an arrow hitting the target, which was originally round but squared off for the sake of the brush. It can, however, also be thought of as showing a line dividing an area into two portions, that is, a line between opposites, and therefore ‘etymologically’ equivalent to the character for ma. The target is the mark, 中 is the arrow hitting the mark and the mark is itself the middle; it is at once what is aimed for and the track or Way leading to it, and the Way is at the same time the track and the target. 41 This metaphor is expanded at length in ‘The Function and Meaning of the Buddhist Image’, which appears as an introduction to A. Snodgrass, Forms of Compassion: The Iconography of Kannon. The meaning of the Buddhist image equates that of a fu, a bamboo tally on which a compact is written. It is split, each party to the agreement keeping one half. The agreement is fulfilled when the two pieces are brought together. The image is thus a ‘symbol’, which in its original meaning was a piece of pottery broken into two to act as a sign of recognition. See Snodgrass, Architecture, Time and Eternity: Stellar and Temporal Symbolism in Traditional Architecture, pp. 44, 45. 42 For the threefold truth, see T. Shutô, Tendaishu: kompon shisô to sono tenkai (The Tendai Sect: Its Basic Thought and Development), Kyoto: Heirakujishoten, 1969, p. 112 ff.; Mochizuki, Bukkyôdaijiten (Encyclopaedia of Buddhism), p. 1606c ff., s.v. Sandai; and p. 3187a, s.v. Tai. 43 The ‘Middle Way’ is another designation for Buddhism. 44 The kyo of kûkyo is also ‘crack, fissure, cavity, hollow’, which brings it into line with the characters examined above. 45 R. Ohashi, ‘The Hermeneutic Approach to Japanese Modernity: “Art-Way,” “Iki” and “CutContinuance”’, in M.F. Marra (ed.), Japanese Hermeneutics: Current Debates on Aesthetics and Interpretation, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002, 25–35, p. 28. Ohashi translates the title as ‘The Doctrine of the Interspace of the Skin Membrane Between Unreal and Real Being’. 46 Compare the ‘skin-membrane’ puppets of the Bunraku with those of the wooden puppets of the Indian and Western traditions. Whereas the latter are moved by strings, which equate the breath threads that link the person to the Puppeteer, the Japanese puppets are empty. They are not moved by a superior spiritual Principle, but by an inner emptiness. Nothing could more directly indicate the difference between the metaphysical traditions and Buddhism. For the symbolism of the string-manipulated puppets, see A.K. Coomaraswamy, ‘Svayamâtrnnâ: Janua Coeli’, in R. Lipsey (ed.), Coomaraswamy, Selected Papers: 1: Traditional Art and Symbolism, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977, 465–520, p. 497. 47 It has been noted by many travellers in Japan that the Japanese don’t look you straight in the eye, but give you a glance that has been likened to a brush stroke. It is the glance of greeting, the gleam of recognition, the momentary eye flash or sparkle that acknowledges understanding. The glancing look, which in its etymological origins meant a slipping look, is the opposite of the gaze, the scrutiny that attempts to look through and look beneath, the piercing look, the look that intrudes, passes through the membrane of the eye of the other, looks to find the soul of the other through the eye, the mirror of the soul. The glance, by contrast, is a gleaming, a look of light and a light look in which understanding momentarily glimmers. 48 See Ohashi, ‘The Hermeneutic Approach to Japanese Modernity: “Art-Way,” “Iki” and “Cut-Continuance”’; G. Parkes, ‘Eloquent Stillness of Stone: Rock in the Dry Landscape

300

Notes

Garden’, in M.F. Marra (ed.), Japanese Hermeneutics: Current Debates on Aesthetics and Interpretation, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002, 44–59, pp. 54, 55. 49 From MLG slippe, ‘to cut’; ‘to give the slip’ is to escape, ‘to cut loose’. 50 Cf. Derrida’s dédoubler, ‘to split’ and also ‘to tear out the lining of a piece of cloth’, discussed in Magliola, Derrida on the Mend, passim. 51 The fusion of horizons of understanding takes place in the space that separates yet at the same time joins the horizons, in the revealing slash between understanding/ misunderstanding, the line of demarcation. See Chapter 8 (The fusion of horizons). 52 Kûkai (774–835 CE) is popularly known by his posthumous name, Kôbô Daishi. As a young monk he brought back from China the doctrines and practices of esoteric Buddhism (mikkyô) and founded the Shingon sect. He was a prolific writer, and an accomplished calligrapher and sculptor. His thought is still a powerful influence in every aspect of Japanese culture. 53 Kûkai, ‘Shôji jissôgi’, in H. Hôshû (ed.), Kôbô Daishi Zenshû, Tokyo, 1909–11, 521–534; Y.S. Hakeda, ‘The Meaning of Sound, Word, and Reality’, Kûkai: Major Works, New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1972, 234–245. The following is based on R. Abé, The Weaving of Mantra: Kûkai and the Construction of Esoteric Buddhist Discourse, New York: Columbia University Press, 1999, Ch. 7, ‘Semiology of the Dharma; or, The Somaticity of the Text’. The Shôji jissôgi dates roughly to the years 821 to 824 CE. 54 Kûkai does not use the term ma in his text, but his findings on language give direct insights into the nature of space–time as encapsulated in the meanings of ma. 55 These correspond to the five elements and consciousness, which play an important role in Shingon doctrine. See Snodgrass, The Matrix and Diamond World Mandalas in Shingon Buddhism, pp. 18 ff., etc. 56 This is expressed by the metaphor of Indra’s Net and by the inter-reflection of stupas in Sudhana’s vision in the Gandavyûha. For Indra’s Net, see F.H. Cook, Hua Yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra, University Park, Penn. and London: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1977; and for Sudhana’s vision, see Thomas Cleary’s translation, Gandavyûha, The Flower Ornament Scripture: A Translation of the Avatamsaka Sutra, trans. T. Cleary, Boston and London: Shambhala, 1987, p. 365 ff. 57 These ideas are not as alien as they might appear at first sight. They have their resonances in Western thinking. Take, for example, this quote from an essay by Mallarmé: ‘The intellectual armature of a poem hides and remains – takes place – in the space that isolates the stanzas and amid the margins of the paper: such a significant silence that it is no less crucial to compose than the verses themselves.’ S. Mallarmé, ‘Proses diverses, réponses à des enquêtes’, in H. Mondor and G. Jean-Aubry (eds), Oeuvres complètes, Paris: Gallimard, 1951, p. 872. 58 This relates to designing. Kûkai says that meaning is a matter of patterns (mon) that we are able to read by way of the agency of differentiation (shabetsu), that is, by way of gaps or disjunctions between the patterns (and the gaps forming the patterns). In this context, madori, ‘grasping the gaps’, is understanding (com-prehend-ing) the gaps in space and time that separate signs (marks, patterns of sounds, forms, etc.). Madori is thus ‘design’, a signing, or signaling, from, making a sign that separates this from that, and thus allowing its sign-ificance to appear. It is a de-sign-ation, a pointing that separates this or that from a confusion of things (forms) to make them significant, meaningful. Designing is a selection, which is etymologically a picking (choosing) and picking apart, choosing between things by separating them out, making a space between one chosen thing and other things, a choosing that makes a distinction, a differentiation (shabetsu). It is patternmaking by indicating gap-spaces. ‘Detailing’ has similar significance. It comes from French de-tailler, ‘to cut from’ (tailler, gives us our word ‘tailor’), which is once again an action of separating and differentiating. As Derrida and Kûkai both say, there is no ultimate referent

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for any word (pattern of sound, pattern of writing), but only other patterns, from which it is distinguishable by differentiation, by gaps. ‘Differ’ in differentiation is from Latin dif(ferre), in which dif is ‘asunder, apart, between’ and ferre is ‘to bear, tend’, so ‘to differ’ is ‘to tend away from’, in the sense of going in another direction, and thus creating a space. 59 Those familiar with Heidegger will hear echoes or suggestive resonances of this in his understanding of topos, the ‘region’ or ‘space’ which is lost to techno-rationalist ways of thinking and being, the topos of Nothingness (das Nichts), which is experienced as a ‘rift’ (der Riss). It is the region in which meaning (Logos) is gathered (legein). The rift is not merely ‘a cleft ripped open’, but is full. It is a ‘clearing’, which appears in the ‘dark woods’ in which Being has been obscured. It is a dance of meaning, which is ‘time’s removing’ and ‘space’s throwing open’ in a ‘play of stillness’. The metaphor of the glimmer of light glimpsed through the crack in the gate also resonates with his exposition of the ‘thing’ as an emergence, a ‘shining forth’. 60

This has resonances in the demarcation of the city limits in many early cultures. See, for example, the laying out of the Etruscan and Roman cities, which started with the rite of ploughing a line to indicate the positions of the enclosing walls. This rite was performed in mimesis of the original establishment of the city by Romulus. See Snodgrass, Architecture, Time and Eternity: Stellar and Temporal Symbolism in Traditional Architecture, pp. 236 ff.

61 Some resonance of this melding of space and time is given in the origin of the English word ‘line’, OE line, which is ‘rope’, but also ‘series’. This has a temporal as well as spatial connotation, in that a series is a sequence, a following on; and it also implies gaps and discontinuities, since ‘series’ is from the Latin word for ‘chain’, coming from serere, ‘to join, to connect’. 62 See Kurokawa, ‘Rikyu Grey and the Art of Ambiguity’, p. 30. The engawa corresponds to the gap between the two kanji that make up the Japanese word for ‘home’, katei, which is literally ‘house-garden’ or ‘house/garden’. 63 There are several famous versions of the story of the artist who enters his own landscape painting, follows its way and disappears behind the mountains. 64 The word ‘play’ in its origins is ‘dance’, a movement, and accordingly the design of the Japanese house might be thought of as choreography, not of forms in light but in and of light. 65 The neologism comes from Derrida. See J. Derrida and G. Vattimo, Religion, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998, p. 11. ‘Globalatinisation’ translates ‘mondialatinisation’.

13 Random thoughts on the Way 1

Fellow Travellers, Conference at Jamberoo, NSW, 2001; Fellow Travellers II, Conference at

2

Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 11.

3

Ibid., p. 12.

Coonnawarra, South Australia, 2003.

4

One of many paraphrases. See R.E. Allen, Greek Philosophy: Thales to Aristotle, New York: Free Press, 1985, p. 40.

5

See Chapter 5 (Ethics and practice).

6

OED, s.v. ‘Wander’.

7

‘Went’, the past tense of ‘to go’, was originally the past tense of ‘wend’.

8

Summairu is simply going, simply being, and being simple. If a child is making a noise or misbehaving, the mother will snap, ‘Summairu’, which, depending on the degree of snappiness, means something between ‘be simple’, ‘simply be’ and ‘shut up’. Summairu has its equivalent in the Japanese words sono mama, which is something like ‘just as it is’. The notion of sono mama plays an important role in the Jôdo Shinshu, whose teachings have had an informing influence on the understandings presented here. Unlike other schools of Buddhism, the Shinshu has no practice, no method to follow in order to

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Notes

approach whatever is supposed to be the end of the Way. It is a profound awareness of one’s own inability, of the insufficiency of one’s own efforts to understand the mysteries, or to use one’s own power (jiriki ) to advance. It is the Way of the powerless, those who realise that they are in a double bind of selfishly desiring to rid themselves (or their selves) of selfhood. The answer to this dilemma, and the many others that crowd in upon us when we come to consider where we are on the Way, is to accept that this is how things are, just as they are (sono mama), and to shut up about it and simply be. If we’re going to get anywhere, it will be by a power other than our own, an other power (tariki ) that indwells things just as they are, and will reveal itself, emerge, if we leave it alone and don’t poke at it and if it doesn’t reveal itself, never mind and no matter, things are as they are, sono mama. 9

They show themselves forth, and this ‘showing’ is etymologically a ‘shining’, a shining forth or shining out. Is it going too far to see in this notion of things and events befalling, as if from the sky, one of those uncanny resonances that languages reveal? It is a basic tenet of the Mahâyâna that forms (‘things’) fleetingly appear from the Void and then return to it; and the Sino-Japanese ideogram that represents ‘Void’ is also that for ‘sky’. The Mahâyânist would have no difficulty in understanding the notion of the appearance of phenomena as if they had appeared, or ‘fallen’, from the sky.

10 The verb ‘to reveal’ contains a seeming paradox, It comes from Lat. re-velare, from velum, ‘veil’, and literally is a ‘reveiling’. This makes sense, however, in the light of Heidegger’s insight that every revealing is a reveiling; every disclosure is simultaneously a closure, a closing over. As some trees emerge from the mists, others are hidden; as figures emerge from a background, others merge back; as one thing presents itself, another absents itself. This interplay of presence and absence is the experience of the Way. As one walks, things emerge in front of you; they catch your attention; and as you proceed, they merge back into the background, receding behind you. 11

The wisdom that inheres in language bears this out: we say, ‘it appears to me’, meaning ‘it seems to me’, and ‘to seem’ and ‘to be seemly’ both stem from Old Norse sœma, ‘honour’. It is fitting (sœmr) I honour what appears, because it has ‘repute’ (L. honor), that is, it is a re-thinking (L. re-putare) of what was always.

12 For example, the ‘Consciousness Only’ doctrine of Yogacâra or Vijñânavâda (J. Hossô) Buddhism, dis-locates (and does not re-locate) the ‘centre’ of consciousness, showing that it is neither ‘inside’ nor ‘outside’. Since consciousness is ‘nowhere’ it is everywhere. What seem to be ‘inside’ and ‘outside’, subject and objects, merge in a consciousness that includes them both. Phenomena arise in this consciousness as the sprouting of seeds that lie within the Mind. That is, thinking is not ‘ours’, but ‘arises’ spontaneously in a consciousness that we imagine, erroneously, to belong to the self. 13 The word ‘commit’ comes from Latin committere, ‘to join, to trust’. 14 Thus Gadamer says that we only understand a text when we read it with an initial acknowledgment that what it says is in some way true or is worth listening to. Without that initial acknowledgment, there is no point in reading the text. 15 Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 14. 16 Ibid., p. 15. 17 What such a simile implies is that the architecture of the other (in this case, Japan’s) is worthy to the extent that it resembles our own. The unfamiliar is valued precisely to the degree that it reinforces the prejudice that privileges the familiar. Further, the comparison conveniently overlooks major discrepancies, such as the fact that the columns at Ise, one of the examples of structural honesty which they eulogise, do not support anything; that ornament abounds; that the photographs they use are singled out precisely because they support their thesis; and so on. 18 This is an example of the hermeneutical position that interpretation adds meanings to the text that were unsuspected or unplanned by its author.

303

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323

Index

Abé, Ryûichi 234–35 Abercrombie 71 ability (nô) 215–16 abnormal discourse 104 accident 215–16, 247 action of non-action 214 actionless activity 213–18, 248 action-orienting stories 37 active non-action 217–18 advaita 190–91, 289n34 advice 281n16 aesthetics 219, 239 affirmation/denial 181–92, 234 agency 217 aimlessness 245–50 âkâsha (‘space’) 227–28, 230 Akcan, Esra 167–68, 171, 175, 178 Alberti, Leon Battista 13–14 Albrecht, J. 259n1 Alexander, Christopher 17 algorithmic logic model 265n2 alien traditions 251–53 allegory 192; of the Cave 270n7 allowance 217 ambiguity 103 American Constitution 270n7 Amitâbha Buddha 230–31 amnesia 215 analogy of proportion 294n22; of proportionality 294n22 anamnesia; see recollection anemorphic architecture 206–07 Angkor 190 anticipation 121 appearance 303n11 application 25, 50, 60–65, 74, 125, 176–77, 271n10 appropriation 157, 179, 253 Aquinas, St Thomas, 294n22 architectural profession 89 architecture as cognitive structure 200–02; as construct 171; as text 136, 145; as writing 236 Architect’s Registration Board 83, 89 argument 280n15 Aristotle; and beauty 14; and household 148;

and law 61; and phronesis 62–63, 138, 212, 271n10; and practice 262n75; and rules 65; and the intellectual virtues 102, 212 Aronowitz, S. 91 artificial intelligence 24–25, 30 Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) 24 artwork 276n37 Asian studies 153–57, 162–63, 283n1 Asian values 292n1 assessment 119–30 assimilation 168–69, 179 Atkins, D. G. 96 atomic model of language 29–30, 34 atomic model of design 53–55 atomic tokens 53–55 attention 142, 248 Augustus 12 Aurelius, Marcus 10 Austin, J.L. 34 authorial intent 303n18 authority 102, 126–30 avant-gardism 281n2 awakening 228, 230 axiom of familiarity 157 balance schema 198–99 Baroque 20–21 Barthes, Roland 277n79 Bashô 233 Baudrillard, Jean 20 Bauhaus 100, 134 beauty 14–15 being 210–11 being-in-the-world 80, 82, 186 Berkel, Ben van 148 Bernstein, Richard 45, 92 Betti, E. 101–02 betweenness 223, 225 Bhabha, Homi 168, 170–72, 175–76 Bilbao Guggenheim Museum 5 Bildung 244–45, 250, 252, 269n62 Bloom, Allan 90, 277n79, 279n110 Boden, M. 77 bodily experience of space 192–94

325

Index

body/mind dichotomy 192–93 bonding 186–89 borrowed landscape (shakkei) 234, 237 boundedness 196 Bouta, Juan Pablo 3 brain 78 Braque, Georges 19 breakdown 39 bricolage 97–98 bricoleur 98 Bruffee, K. 104 Bruns, Gerald 49, 190 Buddhism 207, 213–14, 219 246 Bull Ring (Birmingham) 147 Bultmann, R. 185, 187 bunraku 300n46 Bunyan, John 12 CAD (computer-aided design) 29 calculative reason 90–91, 107–08, 209 Calder, Alexander 217 calligraphy 237 Caputo, John D. 92–95, 277n59 Carnap, Rudolf 29 Cartesian space 225, 227–28 Cassirer, Ernst 191 causality 14 cavern 226–29, 298n12 centre-periphery schema 197 Cézanne, Paul 19 Chikamatsu, Monazaemon 232 Chinese characters 223 choice 113, 115, 252 chû (‘middle’) 300n40 Clark, A. 78 clearing 229, 236, 279n4, 302n59 Clio 140–41 closure/disclosure 303n10 cognition 261n40 cognitive science 77–79 coherence 3–22 collage 97 Colomina, Beatriz 3 Colquoun, Alan 6, 260n17 commitment 250, 303n13 commodity, firmness and delight, 262–63n80 common sense 127–29, 187 communism 243 composition 239 computers 25 Comte, Auguste 7, 15–16 conduit metaphor 198 Connah, Roger 19 consciousness 303n12 container 226–29 context 53, 120–21, 280n2 Continental philosophy 277n79 continuity 136, 145–46, 187

326

contract 280n12 contradiction 14–15 conversation 41, 43–44; and design 47; and horizon 157, 161; and moderate hermeneutics 103–06; spontaneity of 53–54, 176–79 conservative hermeneutics 102–03, 107 control 208–09 Coomaraswamy, A. K. 197, 230, 299n35 Corbusier, Le 99 correspondence 93 Coyne, Richard 29 crashing Rocks 299n35 Cratylus 35 creative industries 24, 79 creativity 25–26, 71–82 crisis in universities 83–84, 95–96; of foundations 92 critical analysis 164; education 92–95; hermeneutics 101, 104; theory 91–92, 102–04; see also liberalism Cubism 19 curricula 89–108, 171–72 cut-continuance (kiretsuzuki) 233–34, 236–39 cut syllable (kireji) 233 cybernetic metaphor of technology 208–09 Dada 277n59 Dasein 282n10 debate 279n5, 280n15 deconstruction 92, 95–101, 277n79 dédoubler 301n50 deference 174, 179–80, 286n13 deferral 169–70, 174, 282n18 dekiru 216–17 Deleuze, Gilles 20–21, 261n44 demarcation of cities 302n60 demythologization 149, 185 dependent co-origination 236 Derrida, Jacques; and Dada 277n59; and difference 169–70, 174–75; and education 92–93, 95–97, 101–03; and good will 278n89; and H. Bloom 277n79; and Japanese philosophy 235, 298n10, 301n50, 301–02n58 Derridada 277n59 Descartes, Renée 15–16, 48, 59, 225, 271n25, 274n37 design 114, 223, 258; and images 290n47; and logic 49–53; and prejudice 48; and Romanticism 74–76; and value 120–21; as conversation 47–48; as dialogue 47, 48–52; as differentiation 301n58; as hermeneutical 74; as madori 236; as object 120; as open-ended 52–53; as play 66–68; as text 47, 52, 119; as translation 85; community 122; culture 122; grammar 29–30; languages 25;

Index

process 44–50, 64–67, 80–82, 249, 269n57, 280n13, 290n47; project 268n64; science 23–24, 134; Science, Department of 23; studio 81–2, 85, 106, 142–45, 245, 248–50; teaching 98–101; see also method detailing 301n58 Dewey, John 72, 79, 81, 91 dialogue 41–44, 47, 49–50, 102, 157, 161, 163, 176, 269n60, 269n63, 285n37; three modes of 154–57, 176, 178–80; see also Socratic dialogue dichotomy 218, 231 differ 302n58 différance 93, 174 difference 54, 167–70, 174–76, 177–80 differentiation (shabetsu) 235–36, 301n58 Dilthey, Wilhelm 13, 260n32, 268n49, 288n24 discipline 216 disclosure 212, 215 disjunction 21 distanciation 297n45 diversity 170 do (‘grasping’) 226–27 drawings 99 Dreyfus, H.L. 77, 92 dry landscape (karesansui) 233–34 dual knowledge thesis 72–74, 273n10 Durand, Jean Nicolas Louis 16, 20 edification 83–85, 150, 285n44; see also Bildung education 101–04, 244, 285n44 effective-historical consciousness, 267n29 Eisenmann, Peter 148 Eliade, Mircea 17, 184, 196–97 emancipation 102 emptiness 205–06, 213, 218–19, 227–33, 294n22 empty space 227–30 enframing 90, 92, 94, 149, 210, 212, 217–18 engawa (‘veranda’) 238, 302n62 ephemerality 205 epieikeia 61 episteme 59–60, 112, 212, 217, 296n37 epistemic knowledge 59–60, 67, 71 equity 61, 270n9 Escher, M.C. 233 ethical judgement 85, 212 ethical knowledge; see phronesis ethics 84–85, 111–15 eurocentrism 172 evaluation 121–22, 129 event 210, 247 excessive clarity 97–98 exclusion 55 excursion and return 197, 243–45, 251–54 exercise 216

explanation 50 exploration 114, 217 facts 53 familiar/unfamiliar; see unfamiliarity/familiarity Farias affair 296n32 felicitous/infelicitous language 34 Fish, Stanley 103, 107, 130, 277–78n83, 278n94, 280n6 five elements 301n55 Fletcher, Sir Bannister 133 Flores, Fernando 77 flower arrangement 233 fluctuations (yuragi) 207 fore-project 36–37 fore-structures of understanding 37–38, 121, 129, 158, 187, 267n24, 280n5 forgetting 141 form (katachi) 227, 229; (shiki) 298–99n26 forms of life 32 formal language 48–50 Foucault, Michel 17, 20, 92, 94, 104, 277n79 four learning styles 73–74 fragmentation 11–13, 19–22, 264n118 Freire, Paulo 91 Freud, Sigmund 148 from-to schema 197–98 fu, 300n41 functionalism 134, 269n71 fusion of horizons 148, 153–64, 176–78, 254, 284n24, 301n51 fusuma (‘screens’) 238 Gadamer, Hans-Georg; and acknowledgment 303n14; and Bildung 244–45; and critical theory 91; and dialogue 41–43, 49; and education 101–03; and ethics 62; and fragment 264n118; and good will 78n89; and history 252, 260n18; and horizon 161–62, 267n21, 284n22; and interpretation 38, 63; and juridical understanding 60–65; and letting-be 217–18; and participation 279n3; and phronesis 212–13, 271n10; and play 42, 65, 93, 271n25; and positioning 8–9; and prejudice 280n4; and questioning 51–52; and repetition 138–39; and subjectobject 54, 271n25; and the beautiful 18–19; and the I-Thou relationship 154–57; and understanding 36, 63, 73, 176 Gallagher, Shaun 77, 83, 91–93, 101, 103–04, 279n109 game-space (Spielraum) 272n30 Gandavyûha 301n56 gap 149, 223–40 gate of Ma 223, 230–32, 234, 239 gateless gate 231–32

327

Index

Geertz, Clifford 104, 145 Gehry, Frank 148 genius 76–77, 80 genius loci 75–76 geometry 13 German Idealism; see Idealism Giedion, Sigfried 7, 258n7 gift 148 Giroux, H. 91 glance 300n47 glimmer 302n59 glimpse 233 globalatinisation 239 gnomon 261n40 goals 46 Gödel, Kurt 295n25 Golden Gate 299n35 good will 103, 278n89, 285n37 grammar 34; construction of 34; rules 280n2 grasping (do) 226 greatest danger 210, 219 Groak, Steven 17 Gropius, Walter 253 Guarini, Guarino 260n33 Guattari, F. 261n44 Guénon, René 197 Guha, Ranajit 169 Gusdorf, G. 184 Habermas, Jürgen 37, 49, 101–02, 159 happening 246, 247–49 Hardy, Adam 133 Harries, Karsten 7, 9, 17, 259n7 hatha-yoga 193 hearth 148 Hegel, G.W.F. 6, 74–75, 82, 138, 244, 252, 260n29 Heidegger, Martin; and being-in-the-world 80, 82; and Buddhism 293n4, 293n22; and clearing 229, 279n4, 302n59, 303n10; and deconstruction 92–95; and enframing 210; and Gadamer 17–18; and letting-be 211–214, 217–18; and myth 186; and play 65; and pre-understanding 37–39, 267n24; and project 268n54; and repetition 139, 282n10; and technical rationality 115, 210, 218; and technology 207–214; and the hermeneutic tradition 13 Heraclitus 244 Herder, Johan Gottfried von 6, 15, 260n29 heritage conservation 282n4 hermeneutic communities 107, 122–30, 187, 278n94, 279n117, 280n6; and the human sciences 245; see also interpretive communities hermeneutical circle 13, 35–41, 44–48, 161–62, 188, 190, 250–51, 282n15,

328

289n31; and designing 45–48; universality of 44–45; validation of 39–40 hermeneutics 5–8, 21, 29–55, 101–03; and education 101–03; and history 5–8, 136–37; critique of 102–03; of suspicion 174 Hermes 12, 262n56 hidden curriculum 90 himaku (‘skin-membrane’) 232 Hirsch, Eric 90, 101–02, 277–78n83 histor (judge) 140, 142 historia 140, 142 historicism 4–8 historiography 259n12 history 5–8, 85, 133–50, 250–52, 259n12, 260n17 hollow space 227 home (katei) 302n62 Homer 141 honpushô (‘originally unproduced’) 214, 295n31 horizon 35, 43, 121, 157–62, 177, 267n21, 284n22 Huizinger, J. 24 human sciences; see hermeneutic sciences humanity (ningen) 224–25 Humboldt, Wilhelm von 6 Husserl, Edmund 284n22 Hvattum, Marie 7, 14, 16 hybridity 176 hypothesis 51, 270n1, 272n7 Idealism 6–7, 74 ikebana 233 image schemata 193–201, 290n49 impermanence 206, 230 in-out schema 196 individualism 77–78 Indra’s Net 301n56 instruction 285n44 instrumental; metaphor of technology 207, 209; view of language 54 instrumentalism 84, 89–91, 94–95 integration 108, 133–35 intellectual authority 127 intention 16 internalisation 280n10 International Style 252, 269n71 interpretation; and anticipation 38; and application 63–65; and architecture 3–11, 148–49; and coherence 14; and design 3, 50, 54, 145, 257–58; and education 101; and fore-meanings 40; and historicism 4–8; and Orientalism 173; and otherness 159, 285n35; and positioning 8–10; and the architectural canon 8–10; and the game of question and answer 42; and the hermeneutical

Index

circle 44; and understanding 63–65; suspicion of 3; validity of 40–41 interpretive communities 108, 280n6; see also hermeneutical communities interval 223–24 intransivity 216 involvement 142 irony 19–20 Ise Shrine 18, 303n17 Isozaki, Arata 225, 297n6 I-Thou relationship 154–57 Ito, Toyo 204, 292n3 James, William 11, 79 Japanese language 216–17 jazz 217 jinen-hôni 214–15 Jinen-hôni-shô 214 Jôdoshin Buddhism 214 Johnson, Mark 78, 80, 96–97, 196 Jones, Lindsay 18 judgement 112, 163, 212, 252, 262n80 Jung, Karl 72–73 juridical understanding 62–63 Kabuki 224 Kahn, Louis 75 Kalay, Y.E. 29 Kant, Immanuel 74, 103, 155, 297n45 katachi (‘form’) 227, 229 katei (‘home’) 302n62 ken 224 kenning 279n1 kinaesthesia 198–99 Kockelmans, Joseph 18–87, 192 Kierkegaard, Sören 137–40, 142 kireji (‘cut syllable’) 233 kiretsuzuki (‘cut-continuance’) 233–34, 236–39 Knight, T.W. 29 knowledge and understanding 153–54 Kôbô Daishi 295n26; see also Kûkai Kolb, D. 73–74 Kramrisch, Stella 197 kû (‘space’) 228 kûkan 230 Kuhn, Thomas 92, 103, 122 Kûkai (Kôbô Daishi) 234–36, 301n52, 301–02n58 Kurokawa, Kisho 149, 205–06, 218–19, 238 Kyojitsu Himaku Ron 232 Kyoto school 295–96n32 Lacan, Jacques 147 Lakoff, George 78, 80 language 30–34, 235; community 280n6; games 33–34; Positivist theory of 30–35; rules 33

Laugier, Marc-Antoine 6, 15–16 laws 59–60 learning a foreign language 159 lecriture 96, 105 Leenhardt, M. 184 Leibniz, G.W. 14–15, 20, 175, 209, 210 letting-be 95, 211–13, 216–19, 248, 294n23 liberalism 91 Libeskind, Daniel 88, 274n4 life experience 268n49, 288n24 light 230, 232; of emptiness 230 limit 237 line 236–37, 302n61 lineaments 13–14 logic 31, 213 logical atomism 31 logical/dialogical design, 48 Logical Positivism 31, 59

ma 149, 176, 207, 223–25, 230, 233–36, 239, 253–54, 297n1 Mâdhyamika 213, 299n35 madori 223, 225–27, 301n58 Magliola, Robert 298n10 Mahâyâna Buddhism 213–14, 227–28, 230–31, 248, 289n34, 292n76, 299n35 Mallarmé, S. 301n57 mandala 149, 183–202, 290n52 Marx, Karl 91, 169 masks 174 Mattôshô(ô) 214 meaning 34, 40, 53, 93, 301n58; construction of 34; projection of 36–37 McEwen, Indra 11–12 meditation 193 memory 78, 140–45, 251 Mercury; see Hermes metanoesis 214 metaphor 149, 187–202, 234, 253, 269n59, 269n65, 279n1, 287n20; comparison theory of 189; structure 187–92 method 42–43, 67 middle (chû) 300n40 Middle Way 219, 231–33, 300n40, 300n43 mid-space 231 mie 224 mimesis 14–15 mind/body dichotomy; see body/mind dichotomy Mingei 215; see also pottery Mirales, Enric 8 misreading, 96–97 Mitchell, William 29–30 Mnemosyne 140 Mobius House 148 models 269n65, 279n1 moderate hermeneutics 101, 103–08 329

Index

Modern Movement 134, 143–44, 205, 219, 253, 281n2 Morton, D. 91, 93 mouth 226, 298n12 mu (‘nothingness’) 229 Mugerauer, Robert 17 muses 140 myô (‘wondrous’) 296n38, 296n39 myth 149, 183–202; theories of 286n5 Nâgârjuna 213, 295n25, 295n26, 299n37 natural sciences 43 naturalness 214–18 nature 214, 295n29 neural network theory 77 ‘New Wave’ architects 149, 206, 218, 219 Nietzsche, Friedrich 141 nihilism 213 nihonjinron 207 ningen (‘humanity’) 224–25 Nô drama 215, 224, 253 no-memory 215 no-mind (mushin) 215–17, 248, 296n36, 299n29 non-action 214 non-duality 190–91, 205–06, 218, 289n34 non-gate 231 non-grasping 294n23 non-place 147–48 non-remembering 215 Norberg-Schulz, Christian 7–8, 165–66, 259n7 normalization 101 nothing (das Nichts) 211, 294n22, 302n59 nothingness (mu) 229 objectivity 85, 130, 154, 160, 176–78, 267n32 objectivity/relativity dichotomy 280n11 objectivity/subjectivity; see subjectivity/objectivity objects 39, 47, 247 oblivion 141, 143, 282n16 occurrence 247 Odin, S. 297n45 Ong, Walter 90 openness 156–57 oppositions 99–100, 230–32 Orientalism 148–49, 168, 172–74, 178 originally unproduced (honpushô) 214, 295n31 otherness 147–50, 156–57, 163, 174, 179 other power (tariki) 214–15, 302n8

paideía (education) 93 paidía (play) 93 Palladio, Andrea 13–14 pâramitâ (‘completion’) 230 part-whole 11–15, 264n123 330

Parthenon 105 participation 113–15, 142, 279n3 past, present, future 46, 251 path schema 198 pattern (mon) 235, 237, 301n58 persuasion 281n16 phenomenon 247 phronesis 62–63, 102, 112, 114, 138–39, 142, 212–13, 248, 252, 262n80, 271n10 Piaget, Jean 73 place of the Way (dôjo) 236 plagiarism 96–97, 99 Plato 12, 14, 18, 30, 59, 62–63, 92–93, 137, 175, 262n56, 270n2 Platonic dialogue; see Socratic dialogue play 24, 65–67, 92–93, 102, 106–07, 268n39, 271n25, 271n37, 302n64 Pollack, Jackson 217 Polanyi, Michael 198 Popper, Karl 5, 272n7 pose (mie) 297n4 positioning 9–10, 14, 21 Positivism 7, 15–19, 30, 260n20 postcolonial studies 149, 167, 172 Postcolonialism 149, 167–68 Postmodernism 134–36, 205–06, 219, 292n76 pottery 257; see also Mingei power 94–95, 202, 283n2 power/knowledge 98, 283n2 practice 59, 111–15, 216 practical reason 262n80 pragmatism 79–80 Prajñâpâramitâ Sutras 227, 229 pratîtya-samutpâda 236 praxis 111–15, 212, 218, 262n80 precedents 135 prejudice 37–38, 43, 48, 52, 101–02, 121–22, 154–55, 158–61, 176, 192, 280n4 prejudice against prejudice 280n4 present-at-hand 39 preservation 145–46 pre-understanding 38–39 Prince of Wales Institute 282n3 principle of sufficient reason 94, 96, 209–10 principle of unfamiliarity 145, 252–53 principles 249–50 problem 269n58 problem setting 89 professionalism 128–29 prohairesis 112, 114 project 268n64, 269n58 projection 137, 143, 188; of meaning 36–41, 46–50, 142–43, 188, 250–51, 268n54, 269n58 puppets 232, 300n46 Pure Land 230–31

Index

question and answer 41–44, 46–47, 49, 51–52, 85, 145, 157, 160, 163, 179, 269n59, 269n60 questioning 49, 190 radical discourse 104–05; in education 92–95, 98–99, 101; in hermeneutics 84, 101, 106, 262n56 radicalism 101 râja-yoga 193 Ramus, Peter 90 Ranke, Leopold von 6 ratio 11–12, 14 Rationalism 6–7, 248 rationality 128, 130, 205–07, 209 rationality/irrationality 72 ready-to-hand 39, 79, 186 reason 213; play of 94; see also principle of sufficient reason receptacle 298n11 recollection 137–38 reflection-in-action 24, 45 regime of truth 281n20 relativism 107–08, 267n32 remembering language 141 repetition 137–40, 144, 282n10 representation 190–91 reproduction 102 research 24, 84, 162–64 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) 84 responsibility 113 retrieval 139 revealing 303n10 rhetoric 12 RIBA 83, 274n4, 279n117 Ricoeur, Paul 160, 184–85, 192, 280n15 rift (der Riss) 302n59 ritual 192–93 Rogers, Richard 17 Romanticism 74–77 Rorty, Richard 92, 103–04, 279n112 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 91 rule of contradiction 14–15 rules 24–25, 29, 54, 65–68, 123–25, 129, 249 rules-of-thumb 125 Rykwert, Joseph 13 Ryle, Gilbert 78 Sachs, Oliver 143 Said, Edward 168, 171–73 Saint-Simon, H. de 7 Saussure, Ferdinand de 9, 97, 261n40 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm 75 Schinkel, Karl Friedrich 8 Schlegel, F. von 157 Schleiermacher, Friedrich 6, 8, 12–13, 15, 17, 19, 261n40

Schön, Donald 25, 45–46, 79, 89, 114 science; see natural sciences scientific theories, 191; see also method Scottish Parliament building 8 screens 237–38 seeing-as 188, 194, 287n20, 287n22 seeming 303n11 seesaw opposition 279n112 seken (‘society’) 225 self power (jiriki) 214, 302n8 self-presencing 272n32 semiogenesis 235 Semper, Sigfried 7–8, 16 sensus communis; see common sense shakkei (‘borrowed landscape’) 234, 237 Shan-tao 230 shiki (‘form’) 298–99n26 Shingon Buddhism 235, 289n34 shining 303n9 Shinran 214 shûnyatâ 228 shôji (‘screens’) 238 Shôji Jissô Gi 234–35 sign 9, 93, 235 signifier/signified 191, 298n10 silent reading 278n96 simile of the divided line 270n2 simply (summa) 246 situatedness 80 situation 267n21 skin-membrane (himaku) 232 slash 234, 301n51 slip 232, 234 Smith, Adam 10 Snodgrass, Adrian 148–49, 196 social sciences 155 society (seken) 225 Socrates 12, 35 Socratic dialogue 41–42, 157, 179 sokushin-jôbutsu 193 solidarity 112–13 sono-mama 302n8 Sontag, Susan 3 space 223, 225, 227–30 spoken/written language 235 spontaneity 212, 216–17, 219, 296n37 spirit 4, 6, 75; of place 75 Spivak, Gayatri 168–72, 174 standards 107–08, 281n22 standing reserve 209, 219 stewardship 282n20 Stewart, Susan 262–63n80 Stiny, George 29 Stoicism 10 stream of consciousness 79 stûpa 193 style 96 subaltern historians 169

331

Index

subjectivity 93 subjectivity/objectivity 61, 72, 108, 119–20, 124 subject-object dichotomy 40, 42, 54, 66, 72, 80, 85, 93, 119–20, 124, 154, 271n25 subject-object metaphor 124, 129 suchness 213 Sudhana’s vision 301n56 sumie painting 215, 233, 237–38 summairu 302n8 Sun Door 230, 299n35 Surrealism 19 Suzuki, D.T. 296n36 Sydney Opera House 253–54 symbiosis 206 symbol 264n118, 300n41 symmetry 12–13 Symplegades 299n35 synecdoche 264n123 syntax 93

tabula rasa 43, 48, 157 tacit knowledge 198, 270n77 tacit understanding 52, 121–30, 270n77 talk 280n15 tally (fu) 300n41 Tanabe, Hajime 214, 295–96n32 Tao 213, 246–47 Taoism 227–28, 246 Tao-te-ching 227, 248 tathâgatâ 248 Taut, Bruno 253 teaching practice 95–101 techne 59, 11–13, 212, 217, 279n6, 296n37 technology 90, 206, 208–11, 219 techno-rationalism 113–15, 209–10, 212, 217–19 tenkô 207 text 137, 143; and metatext 174; as metaphor 119–20 Teymur, Necbet 133 theoria 111–15, theoros 113, 142 theory 59, 11–13, 270n1; and practice 84, 212 thing 229 thinking-in-action 212–13 third space 176 thought and community 278n94 three modes of dialogue 154–57, 176, 178–80 threefold truth 231 thrownness 186 total knowledge 228 topos 302n59 Toulmin, S. 127 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 31 332

tradition 205–19, 267n30 training 216, 285n44 translation 85, 144–45, 159, 178–79, 219, 254 transmission 18 truth 212, 274n37, 279n110 Tschumi, Bernard 21 Ulmer, G.L. 96, 98 uncertainty 40 unconscious 269n61 understanding 44, 63–65, 74, 154 UNESCO 24 unfamilarity/familiarity 105–06, 145, 156–57, 161, 177, 252–53, 279n109, 303n17 unity 11–12, 16–18, 197 universities 83–84, 95–96; crisis in 83–84 unspontaneous arts 296n37 Vajrayâna 193 valley 226–27 value 120–21, 123 Van der Leeuw, G. 184 Vesely, Dalibor 18–19 vessel 226–27 vestibule apparatus 198 Vijñânavâda Buddhism 257, 303n12 Viollet-le-Duc, E.E. 16 Vitruvius, Marcus 9–13, 262–63n80 Volkgeist (Spirit of a people) 6, 15

wakon yôsei 207, 293n8 wandering 245–50 Watkin, David 5 Watsuji, Tetsurô 297n5 way 198, 213, 243–54 way of repentance 295–96n32 weakness of the logos 30–31 welfare 156 White, Hayden 7, 20, 264n123 White Path 230 whole and part 35–37, 46, 50, 53 Whyte, Ian Boyd 5, 259n9 Winograd, Terry 77 wisdom 228 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 31–33, 55 Wittkower, Rudolph 13 wondrous (myô) 215 words, meaning of 34, 53, 121 world 287n13, 298n12 Wotton, Sir Henry 262–63n80 writing 235–36; and speech 93, 235 zangedô (‘way of repentance’) 295–96n32 Zavarzadeh, M. 91, 93 Zeami 215 Zeitgeist (Spirit of an age) 6, 15 Zen 219, 296n36 zero 229