Norberg-Shultz

Why has this author been drawn to Heiddeger’s ideas as they relate to today’s architects and their work?

Norberg-Shultz seems to be drawn to Heiddeger’s ideas very much in their simplicity in terms of how an average person encounters the built environment. Trakl’s poem (that had previously been analyzed by Heiddeger) was deemed useful and important enough to be referenced again. The author finds the few words used in the poem to be a way of relaying and conveying a sense of “place” in the way that the common man understands it. This, along with other major portions of the essay, can be related to architects and their work today in the form of criticism. The theories, practices, and built results of architecture students and architects today often follow a convoluted path that is much less rich than the poem that was referenced, but at the same time is more complex. This can lead to an architecture that is lost to the user. Intentions and diagrams that are produced by architects interpreted quite differently in actuality by occupants of built spaces. He ends the essay by stating that, “We only recognize the fact that man is an integral part of the environment, and that it can only lead to human alienation and environmental disruption if he forgets that.” Norberg-Shultz is surely in support of a client or user-based architecture, one that can be simply understood and enjoyed.