Phenomenology and the Aspiration of Consciousness
Phenomenology is relatively new. Edmund Husserl was inspired to define this model of inquiry after he encountered Buddhist meditative practice and method of introspection.1 One could say that he derived phenomenology with the same approach to nature that modern science and technology uses to extract processes and to isolate the matter we want from nature. In this case it is to extract intellectual material from introspective meditative consciousness. It is powerful as a disciplined framework but it is missing the fullness of consciousness by design.
Repurposing this mental process can be reversed at any point because it is in the mutable realm of mind, unlike matter diverted from its living source that cannot be returned. I call it repurposing because the purpose of Mind is the goal of life. All that we do is theoretically in the service of that goal, consciously or not. Spiritual practice is parallel with the phenomenological approach and the knowledge system of spiritual practice with which it is bound up.
Phenomenology appears to be the study of phenomena. That is already quite abstract for a lot of folks. That is a literal interpretation of the term. Phenomenology’s outcomes are no longer literally descriptive of phenomena. Husserl differentiated this clearly. The terms are ‘natural’, which is sense perceived phenomena and striving for transcendent knowledge. Phenomenology is about the ‘essence’ of phenomena. Instead of a distinction between transcendental and hermeneutic phenomenology, I describe an approach based on Husserl’s original form. Phenomenological outcomes are akin to phenomena in the same way that architecture is akin to building (technology).
Husserl’s original ‘pure’ phenomenology, was taken up by Martin Heidegger. Although it is not clearly stated and got muddled in WWII circumstances and his personal life, Heidegger took up what pure phenomenology implies, however it may appear. Revealing the essence of the subject at hand for the production of practical outcomes, which Heidegger called the ‘essence’, is the fruit of conscious effort in phenomenological machinery. ‘Essence’ might remain a matter of degree, although it can be argued that there is an absolute essence.
In the latter part of his life, Heidegger developed the essence of Machine Ages technology, which is our technology as we live it. This is focussed on talks that he gave in the 1950s and published as Die Frage nach der Technic and Die Kehre. Die Kehre, generally translated as ‘The Turn’ (which is not really right), refers to ideas Heidegger already proposed in the 1930s, but continued with through the 1950s.
Heidegger’s work is difficult. Even a rudimentary understanding makes it clear that Heidegger is describing technology as inherently temporary and that it creates its own end. He is reticent to express superficial valuations. He ‘discovers’, as he works, that the phenomenological essence of technology is profoundly destructive, so that it will eliminate its value. I will engage that with Heidegger’s development of the essence of technology in PART.III.technology.
Heidegger’s work toward the essence of technology supports properly repositioning technology in the profession of architecture, and to serve the redevelopment of architectural value. This allows us to trigger the unconcealing of architectural value in our currently deficient profession. I am calling for a distinction between building (and) technology and architecture. This will put most of us into a quandary; how is it that architecture is not buildings?
Christian Norberg-Schulz is widely recognized as a phenomenologist architectural theoretician. His work seems to help us to meaningfully understand Modernist architectural projects as potential for professional architects to develop value. It has not helped to address the malaise of the profession, and it is not about practice. He benefits from Heidegger’s work, but does not include Heidegger’s work on technology as I do. Norberg-Schulz’ work on architecture is vulnerable to the rule of technology.
I differentiate architecture from building and its materiality in a way that Norberg-Schulz did not. Technology is based on scientific objective outcomes. Architecture’s basis is the aspiration that we all carry in our hearts. Architecture is related to nature through our consciousness, which is vulnerable to technology in the same way as nature.
Norberg–Schultz, Frey and Schwarz
In Existence, Space and Architecture, his second published book, Norberg-Schultz quotes Dagobert Frey:
The goal already contains the path as its point of reference, directional indicator and ultimate end; and movement may be directed towards the goal, may emanate from it or may encircle it. All architecture is a structuring of space by means of a goal or path. Every house is an architecturally structured “path”: the specific possibilities of movement and the drives towards movement as one proceeds from the entrance through the sequence of spatial entities have been pre–determined by the architectural structuring of that space and one experiences the space accordingly. But at the same time, in its relation to the surrounding space, it is a “goal”, and we either advance toward this goal or depart from it.2
This quote implicates phenomenology in architecture for Norberg-Schulz. It brings ‘goal’ and ‘path’ into proximity with architectural and spiritual practices to position Norberg-Schulz near spiritual practice for us. It is not clear if Frey intended spiritual practice or that this goal is intended as the goal of life. While Norberg-Schulz began right on the threshold of spirituality, he did not cross to spirituality, and pointed away from spirituality. I read his text as including spirituality.
The importance of spirituality’s antecedents to phenomenology, (i.e. where it is found in its living entity, its Natural repose within human spirit), is the potential to influence paradigmatic change to the architectural profession through the ancient presence of architecture. Norberg-Schulz continues with the ideal of the current profession. I am introducing support for that deeper knowledge and functionality of architectural practice via phenomenology.
Norberg-Schulz considers Frey’s contribution as part of a “better knowledge of history”. He accurately writes that,
Frey uses the word ‘experience’ (perception), but he implies that architectural space is not a function of this experience, rather it has a structure which ought to be experienced, because it expresses the basic properties of human existence.3
To further explain this, Norberg–Schulz writes, “that the fundamental structure of existence, of ‘being in the world’ … (be) translate(d) … into concrete properties of architectural space”,4 attributing the experience of meaning to the building. The translation of life to ‘architectural space’ is taken as building and city fabric. Perhaps because Norberg-Schulz brought us this far, we have arrived at the need to define the meaning of “structure” more precisely.
Without discriminating technical means from architecture, Norberg-Schulz narrows the powerful simplicity of Frey’s statement and stays within current planning and project practices as service for construction, including design and the AEC model of practice. Such a “translation of life” is not complete, accurate or static. It is meaningful as a measure of that absent fullness. ‘Structure’ must include energy, concepts, feelings, timings, order itself. Architecture bears all of these, which are often far from materiality.
Norberg-Schulz quotes Rudolf Schwarz:
Man cannot plan the world without designing himself.5
Why did Schwarz not write, ‘Mankind must design himself as he plans the world.’? Posing that in the negative as he does, he implies that it is unintended or that we would try to avoid it. As a positive assertion it expresses responsibility for ourselves. Spiritual practice is implicated. The negative assertion conceals it.
At the time he took his land, he already decided the plan of his life and he measured the earth accordingly and placed the ground–plan of his historical existence within it.67
This links us to the materialist mode and ties to history and how it interprets our present; back again to wrestling with justifications of the past as objective made-into-scientific truth. Schwarz’s statements certainly pertain to building as technological object, but not necessarily to the architectural value that they may serve. If we examine what ‘the plan of life’ might mean, as multi-faceted and including the micro- and macrocosmos that we are as whole beings, pure phenomenology then parallels the need that is served in spirituality, in ‘stopping the world’, in realizing the unmodified Mind, and in unconcealing architecture. What I am describing may at first appear as a very minimal, perhaps tiny, shift from one side to another, but it is a paradigmatically definitive shift.
These quotes exemplify how Norberg-Schulz’s work points to discriminating the depth of architectural practice through implied phenomenological outcomes, while he does not go that far. The reference to the discussion of phenomenology, does not, in the end convince us that we are not merely discussing phenomena.
Con–fusing Architecture and Building
Norberg–Schulz uses phenomenological research to support and justify high quality architecture within our Modernist framework. Although Norberg-Schulz aims to investigate the ‘psychic’ implications, he conflates or ‘con—fuses’8 the object with the experience. The common assumption is that scientific methodology and its technology as the physical fact of the space is melted together with our awareness of architecture. We have our verifiable experiential output. But the importance of architecture defaults nominally to functions and status of the object as the building or built space. We come a radical juncture.
Norberg-Schulz’s work expresses and intensifies the need to recognize the lack of architectural value that is generated by what we build within the contemporary scientific Machine Ages profession. Architecture as we know it professionally is not opposed to this need. Professionals refer to solving this in many ways. The profession is on the path toward fulfilling the relationship of human conscious experience to the world we live in. It is merely stopped. What is blocking that fulfilment?
In not discriminating architecture from building, paradigmatic questioning of the Modernist profession is blocked. Questioning the global prioritization of technology that is expressed very widely in the profession and its education becomes necessary.
Norberg-Schulz’s work has an expository effect while it is safe. Norberg–Schultz’s phenomenological approach has the strange reversal of failing to evolve architecture in practice because it does not counter objectifying architectural value as building. It is strange because it might seem obvious that it is necessary to address buildings to increase social, cultural, individual and economic value of architecture. This is true, yet it is, nevertheless, not about building. Accepting that architecture is its built form slakes this need to make change to this professional con–fusion. Change might even seem to be against architecture.
The implication is that the current profession does not have a clear approach to architecture at all. The crashing value of architectural professional service is actually plain evidence that something is amiss. Norberg–Schultz’s success was in part that his approach supports the professional in what has become a very wobbly proposition.
How Norberg-Schulz Points to Architectural Value and to Spirituality
First of all I owe to Heidegger the concept of dwelling. “Existential foothold” and “dwelling” are synonyms, and “dwelling”, in an existential sense, is the purpose of architecture. Man dwells when he can orientate himself within and identify himself with an environment, or, in short, when he experiences the environment as meaningful. Dwelling therefore implies some-thing more than “shelter”. It implies that the spaces where life occurs are places, in the true sense of the word. A place is a space which has a distinct character.
Since ancient times the genius loci, or “spirit of place”, has been recognized as the concrete reality man has to face and come to terms with in his daily life. Architecture means to visualize the genius loci, and the task of the architect is to create meaningful places, whereby he helps man to dwell.9
Stating that dwelling in the existential sense is the purpose of architecture means either that dwelling ‘existentially’ remains within physical material, and the behaviour and the programming of buildings, or that it includes conscious awareness and its aspiration in human life, extending beyond what can be physical measure and directed. The latter, if it informed a professional mandate, would change the very core of our professional systems, with architecture as the value that is expressed by giving it measure. Although Norberg-Schulz implied this in Genius Loci, and he states that “existential meanings have deeper roots” than socio-economic conditions, he only edges ever nearer the subtle moment of a tiny difference.
By associating phenomenology with architecture Norberg-Schulz heralds important information. So, what is that? He claims that dwelling implies “something more than “shelter”“, but “character”, “spirit of place” and genius loci, and then discussing “place” and “place now”, is not enough. He claimed that architects make the “spirit of place” “where life occurs”, but it must be more than human mundane life with nature’s fullness of life and our full spirits and those manifest in a landscape.
Architecture is dimensions at the moment of experience. Making the environment so that architecture presences is experience of aspiration for the experiencer. This is “place now” and “where (human conscious) life’ occurs; it occurs in mind. In light of architecture, phenomenology must include how the built and planned environment create the architectural affect. How does the built form meet awareness so that it presences aspiration? This is not done in describing phenomena, it is knowing something about the subtle bodies of mind and ‘spirit’ beyond mind.
Norberg-Schulz provides an ideational start for this. Architecture is not an existential foothold, it is what we do with our foothold in the world. Architecture supports the purpose of dwelling consciousness. Architecture is not turned toward the genius loci, it becomes a co-creative part of it. We can convincingly move beyond phenomena with the awareness that the faculty of conscious mind must be taken in hand in preparations that provide for architecture. This will provide profound depth to architectural practice.
Breaking the Profession’s Concealment of What We Are Not Valuing
The architectural profession is in a stalemate. The professional technicist proxy ‘pulls’ technology over a ‘gap’ created by what it cannot include. That gap appears to be handled, but something is concealed as if under a carpet. The mainstream of architecture bridges between our full potential and capacity and architecture as a profession of building technology.
Historically, the profession sought a way to absorb radical technological change. As they did this, architects absorbed a discontinuity that was not as clear 150 years ago. The profession makes concrete the need to cross that discontinuity. What discontinuity does that bridge conceal? What does that discontinuity conceal?
We remain the same humanity as we were then, 150 to 200 years ago, and long before that. What is it that in our experience remains disjunct? Frey, Schwarz and Norberg-Schulz do not respond to this directly. The answer is implied. Or perhaps it is inferred? Heidegger’s discussion of technology helps us to examine the essence of that concealing action.
Each of us is scientifically defined as being 10x more energy and matter than most of us can feel or experience, while the sub- and superconscious are felt but inaccessible to most of us. The past two centuries of scientific advancement has proven this and continues to expand on this. More and more, we have to deal with this unknown as it becomes anchored in our daily lives. Stark divisions between levels and types of understanding are fracturing daily life.
The physical built form, con–fused as architecture, bridges an interval that builds this unknown in the world as absence. We bridge an interval of unknowing as science and technology to look like understanding, aesthetics and reason. It has become the form of the professional’s competency and power. When we accept that the building is architecture, we are concealing the overwhelming wonder that we are part of, a vast realm that is as yet untapped in our lives. Are we concealing the actual integrity of the world and the full capacity that we have as we bridge the gap with ideas and things that are vastly inferior? Is that what the myth of garbage, beyond merely the stuff of refuse and reminder, deals with in everyday life? Is that why it is a mythology?
All 100% of the fullness of nature is present and integrated and is part of us in ways that we cannot imagine today. This has been written about for millennia. Today it is still the known unknown, inverted from opportunity to lack.
This value of architecture may be revealed and defined through understanding and using the Verknüpfung of spirituality with architecture. The bridge that we call technology, which vanishes the disjunction, expresses the unknowing that spirituality has always dealt with. Phenomenology is a tool to reveal that bridge for what it is in practice. This will not reveal that fullness on its own. Phenomenology’s antecedent knowledge is a giant body of knowledge of humanity’s aspiration to reveal humility, the divine, and the wonder that architecture gives measure.
Architecture is uniquely the measure of awareness at each and any moment that it may be presenced by anyone at every unique moment of their awareness. It does not ‘do’ anything, (as many architects keep expressing), although anthropomorphizing buildings as ‘doing’ represents a concealed truth. We dwell, while architecture is not the building. This is the wellbeing that covers all others.
Husserl described the need for an “utterly original philosophy” that “radically clarif[ies] the sense and the motifs of philosophical problems” around the start of WWI. At the time the power of Machine Ages change was intense. The future was an attractive beacon.’Pure’ phenomenology responds to the innocently optimistic feeling for new discoveries. He adheres to science, so that the method “must find whatever solution is genuinely scientific.” You can read the process of ‘phenomenological reduction’ here.
D. Frey “Grundlegung zu einer vergelichenden Kunstwissenschaft” 1949. p. 6, in Norberg-Schulz, Existence, Space and Architecture. 1971. p. 14
R. Schwarz. The Church Incarnate. 1958, and Von der Bebauung der Erde. 1949, in Norberg–Schulz, Existence Space and Architecture. 1971. p. 15.
Ibid. This continues the previous quote.
This accords with Heidegger. It expresses history as a form of Bestand (see below in this footnote) and the ‘already decided’ according to the ‘original granting of Being’s destining’. This contextualizes architecture to differentiate it from the physical environment. Both of the above quotes can be pointed at architecture through the lens of technology. “16. Bestand ordinarily denotes a store or supply as “standing by.” It carries the connotation of the verb bestehen with its dual meaning of to last and to undergo. Heidegger uses the word to characterize the manner in which everything commanded into place and ordered according to the challenging demand ruling in modern technology presences as revealed. He wishes to stress here not the permanency, but the orderability and substitutability of objects. Bestand contrasts with Gegenstand (object; that which stands over against). Objects indeed lose their character as objects when they are caught up in the “standing-reserve.”” from Lovitt’s translation ff. p. 17.
Con–fuse. I have taken this meaning from a teacher of mine, Dr. Elisabeth von Samsonow, who takes it in a literal (and playful) way. This is in German. It expresses that we fuse things that are in contradiction each to other together. It is the action or the descriptor of a source of what might cause confusion in a person.
Norberg-Schulz. Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture. New York: Rizzoli, 1980, p. 5.