Architectural Phenomenology and the
Rise of the Postmodern
Phenomenology (from Greek phainómenon
"that which appears" and lógos "study") is the
philosophical study of the structures of
experience and consciousness.
The term architectural phenomenology came into wide use in the
post-war period to refer to the study of architecture as it presents itself
to consciousness in terms of so-called archetypal human experiences,
such as the bodily orientation of up and down, the perce- ptions of
light and shadow, or the feelings of dryness and wetness.
Examining architecture through
questions of perception and
affect, as opposed to the analytic
tradition of analysing buildings in
terms of stylistic rules of
composition.
architectural phenomenology
was a continuation of efforts to
restore the lost unity of experience
architecturally, but it was also different
insofar as it posited authentic experience as
something timeless and fundamentally
external to modernity.
Post modern architecture -
experience architecture - a
major triumph over the
aesthetic and intellectual
constraints of modern
architecture.
Jean Labatut, Charles Moore, Christian
Norberg-Schulz, and Kenneth Frampton, whose
teachings and writings made their impact on
architectural culture slowly and deliberately,
over decades rather than years.
Their ambivalence of the
relationship between theory and
practice sowed the seeds of
anti-intellectualism into
contemporary architectural
theory.
Architectural pheno- menology refers to
this ambiguous intellectual realm, and to
the process whereby architects grew
self-aware of its ambiguity, testing,
contesting, celebrating, and exploiting it
for the purpose of defending the belief
that architectural practice embodied a
unique mode of intellectuality that could
not be separated from aesthetic
experience.
Design vs Theory
Some enthusiastically embrace it – usually
the design faculty – commonly using it to
signify, more or less restrictively, the ideas of
paying close attention to the role that
sensory experience plays in our
understanding of architecture, and of
designing in such a way as to rein- force
recognizable patterns of experiencing
buildings.
Others emphatically reject it – typically the
history and theory faculty – as a soft type of
history and theory at best, and at worst as a
dangerous form of detheorized history and
dehistoricized theory, which takes the critical
bite out of intellectual work in order to
operatively legitimate architec- ture’s status
quo.
Architectural phenomenology was an early phase
in the intellectual devel- opment of
postmodernism.
It was important not only for setting the stage for later
struc- turalist and post-structuralist phases of post-
modernism but also for radically expanding what was
deemed legitimate intellectual work in architecture.
theoretical questions regarding the
authenticity of the human experience of
architecture and place, and the stability of
history as a grounding source of design.
these questions were turned into their negative
form during the later deconstructivist phase of
postmodernism, but remained its defining
themes.
Robert Venturi, whose Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture
Refer to text from Theory and Manifestos
Change in concepts over phenomenology is
affected by architects generation and the
situation in which they live
Arguments counteracting phenomenology
Architecture and Politics
Deconstructive post modernism
reproached architectural phenomenology for
mishandling the postmodernist themes of history
and theory, and for having essen- tialized both into
a specious notion of univer- sal human experience.
abatut had made the case that the historical sources of architecture should be expanded beyond
the reduced vocabulary of classicism to include roadside commercial advertising billboards and
other emblems of popular culture.
The key to that expansion was Labatut’s four-step process to learn to experience existing things in a
modern way, assimilate the inner experiential lessons, forget the outer form of the object, and create
the same experience within a different form
Architectural phenomenology coalesced into a coherent discourse through the intertwining of the search
for authentic experience and the search to reconcile modernism with its own history.
Architectural phenomenology, the dis- course that
wove together sensorial experi- ence and
architectural history, achieved coherence by
interlacing three thematic strands. Woven together,
these three strands defined architectural
phenomenology and its legacy.
(1) EXPERIENCE: - the senses were
not historically determined -
buildings are designed with the
human body in mind - bodily
experience became the point of
entry for spiritualist and religious
interpretations of architecture -
began to turn against modernism’s
secular objectivity.
(2) HISTORY: - modernist
belief that historical
buildings were
expressions of a deeper
structuring reality, which
was thought to remain
constant across time.
(3) THEORY: - emerged as an early
instance of interdisciplinarity - supports
the thesis that experience was the
‘essence’ of architecture - architects
searched for evidence in other disciplines,
most notably in phenomenological
philosophy - an ambiguous but unique
realm, at the intersection of the
professional architect’s and the historian’s
practice - transformed the tradition of
architectural historiography - resulting in
important new theories and modes of
writing architectural history, which
incorporated the visual and experiential
sensitivity of architectural design.