An Eco-poetic Approach to Architecture Across Boundaries
Abstract
As highlighted by the post-Cartesian discourse across philosophical schools, Western thought had been struggling for a long time with conceiving interconnectedness. The problematic of Western dualism is most apparent with the so-called mind-body problem, but the issue does not only relate to the separation of body and mind but also the separation of living beings from their environments. Asian philosophy, on the other hand, has had a long history of thinking relations. The paper argues that an architectural philosophy that is open for a dialogue with Asian views would allow for a new approach to conceptualising the interconnectedness of minds, bodies, environments, and cultures. Linking Asian and Western aesthetics with a discourse on ecology, and setting it into dialogue with contemporary theories of architecture, the paper also refers torecent research on embodiment that is engaging from a new point of view with the natural sciences, and that appears to confirm positions of traditional Chinese philosophy. Reconsidering traditional Chinese art and aesthetics, the paper suggests, could initiate a new eco-poetic way of thinking the built environment and its design in favour of a future that is more than smart.
References
[1] Anonymous(∼300BC).GreatCommentary,inBookofChanges[online].ChineseTextProject.Available from: http://ctext.org/book-of-changes/xi-ci-xia#n46944 Accessed March 25, 2019.
[2] Birrell, A. (1999). Chinese Mythology: An Introduction. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press.
[3] Bush, S. (2012). The Chinese Literati on Painting. Su Shih (1037-1101) to Tung Ch’i-ch’ang (1555-1636). Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
[4] Cody, J., N. Steinhardt, and T. Atkin (2011). Chinese Architecture and the Beaux-Arts. Spatial Habitus: Making and Meaning in Asia’s Vernacular Architecture. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
[5] Derrida, J. (1978). Edmund Husserl’s The Origin of Geometry. New York: Nicolas Hays.
[6] Derrida, J. (1990). A letter to Peter Eisenman. Assemblage (12), 6–13.
[7] Descartes,R.([1637]1968).Discourseonthemethodofproperlyconductingone’sreasonandofseeking the truth in the sciences, in Discourse on Method and the Meditations, pp. 25–92. London: Penguin Books.
[8] Dong, Y. (2017). Dwelling between mountain and water: A return to the traditional ideal world. The FuyangprojectbyAmateurArchitectureStudio,inM.J.Holm,K.Kjeldsen,andM.M.Kallehauge(Eds.), Wang Shu Amateur Architecture Studio, pp. 129–144. Baden: Lars Müller Publishers.
[9] Duiker, W. J. (1972). The aesthetics philosophy of Ts’ai Yuan-p’ei. Philosophy East and West, vol. 22(4), pp. 385-401.
[10] Duiker, W. J. (2010). Ts’ai Yuan-p’ei: Educator of Modern China. University Park and London: Pennsylvania State University Press.
[11] Fung,S.(1999).Hereandthereinyuanye.StudiesintheHistoryofGardensandDesignedLandscapes, vol. 19(1), pp. 36–45.
[12] Gage, F. H. (2003). Neuroscience and architecture - theme presentation [online]. AIA 2003 National Convention & Expo, May 8-10, 2003, San Diego, California. Academy of Neuroscience forArchitecture (ANFA). Available from: http://anfarch.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/2004-02-01-FredGage-Lecture-AIA-03-compressed.pdf Accessed March 11, 2019.
[13] Günther, G. (1991). Idee und Grundriss einer nicht-Aristotelischen Logik [Idea and Outline of a NonAristotelian Logic] (3rd ed.). Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag.
[14] Han, B. ([2011] 2017). Shanzhai: Deconstruction in Chinese. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
[15] Haraway, D. (2013). Multispecies Cosmopolitics: Staying with the Trouble [online]. Tucson, AZ: Arizona State University. Available from: https://ihr.asu.edu/news-events/events/multispecies-cosmopoliticsstaying-trouble Accessed March 11, 2019.
[16] Harman, G. (2002). Tool-Being: Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects. Chicago and La Salle, IL: Open Court Publishing.
[17] Hockney, D. and P. Haas (1988). A Day on the Grand Canal with the Emperor of China, or Surface Is Illusion but so Is Depth [Film, 46 minutes]. New York: Milestone Films.
[18] Husserl, E. ([1936] 1954). Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. Ein Einleitung in die phänomenologische Philosophie [The Crisis of European SciencesandTranscendental.Phenomenology.AnIntroduction],VolumeHusserlianaVIofHusserliana, Edmund Husserl Gesammelte Werke. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
[19] Jullien, F. ([2014] 2018). Living Off Landscape: Or, the Unthought-of in Reason. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield International.
[20] Li, X. (1991). Chinese Conception of Space. Beijing: China Architecture and Building Press.
[21] Li, Z. ([1989] 2010). The Chinese Aesthetic Tradition. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
[22] Littlejohn,R.(2014).ChinesereceptionsofWesternphilosophy.The ASIANetwork Exchange: A Journal for Asian Studies in the Liberal Arts, vol 22(1), pp. 38–48.
[23] Lu, A. (2011). Lost in translation: Modernist interpretation of the Chinese garden as experiential space and its assumptions. Journal of Architecture, vol. 16(4), pp. 499–527. [24] Mallgrave, H. F. (2013). Architecture and Embodiment: the implications of the new sciences and humanities for design. London and New York: Routledge.
[25] Mallgrave, H. F., E. Ikonomou, and R. Vischer (1994). Empathy, form, and space: problems in German aesthetics, 1873-1893. Texts & documents. Santa Monica, CA: Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities.
[26] Mallgrave, H. F., J. Pallasmaa, S. Robinson, and V. Gallese (2015). Architecture and Empathy. A Tapio Wirkkala-Rut Bryk Design Reader. Espoo: Tapio Wirkkala-Rut Bryk Foundation.
[27] Maturana, H. R. and F. J. Varela (1980). Autopoiesis and Cognition: the realization of the living. Boston studies in the philosophy of science – 42. Dordrecht: Reidel.
[28] Pallasmaa,J.,H.F.Mallgrave,andM.Arbib(2013).ArchitectureandNeurosciencewithessaysbyJuhani Pallasmaa, Harry Francis Mallgrave and Michael Arbib. Espoo: Tapio Wirkkala-Rut Bryk Foundation.
[29] Pérez-Gómez, A. ([1980] 1983). Architecture and the Crisis of Modern Science, revised English edition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
[30] Pérez-Gómez, A. (2016). Attunement: architectural meaning after the crisis of modern science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
[31] Prigogine, I. and I. Stengers ([1979] 1984). Order Out of Chaos: Man’s New Dialogue with Nature. Toronto, New York, London, Sydney: Bantham Books.
[32] Robinson,S.andJ.Pallasmaa(2015).Mind in Architecture: Neuroscience,Embodiment, and the Future of Design. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
[33] Ruan, X. (2002). Accidental affinities: American Beaux-Arts in twentieth-century Chinese architectural education and practice. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 61(1), pp. 30–47.
[34] Sloterdijk,P.(2011).Architectureasanartofimmersion.Interstices: Journal of Architecture and Related Arts 12, pp. 105–109. Translated by A.-Chr. Engels-Schwarzpaul. Originally published as Sloterdijk, P. (2006). Architektur als Immersionskunst. Arch+, 178 (June), pp. 58- 63.
[35] Strathern, M. ([1987] 1990). Out of Context: The Persuasive Fictions of Anthropology, in Modernist Anthropology: From Fieldwork to Text. pp. 80–130. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
[36] Sze, M. M. and K. Wang ([1679-1701] 1978). The Mustard Seed Garden: Manual of Painting. Bollingen series. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
[37] Toffler, A. (1984). Foreword: Science and change, in Order Out of Chaos: Man’s New Dialogue with Nature, pp. xi–xxvi. Toronto, New York, London, Sydney: Bantham Books.
[38] Uexküll,J.v.,J.D.O’Neill,D.Sagan,andG.Winthrop-Young(2010). A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans, with A Theory of Meaning. Posthumanities vol. 12. Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press.
[39] Vesely,D.(2004). Architecture in the Age of Divided Representation: The Question of Creativity in the Shadow of Production. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
[40] Westermann, C. (2018). On delight: thoughts for tomorrow. Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research, vol. 16(1), 43–51.
[41] Weyl, H. (1949). Philosophy of Mathematics and Natural Science. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
[42] Zhu,J.(2004).Chinesespatialstrategies:imperialBeijing,1420-1911.LondonandNewYork:Routledge.
[43] Zong, B. and J. De Meyer ([1981] 2017). The birth of artistic conception in China, in Art in Translation, pp. 367–396.
[44] Zou, H. (2002). The jing of a perspective garden. Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes, vol. 22(4), pp. 293–326.