Norberg-Schulz

1 | Why has Norberg-Schulz been drawn to Heidegger’s ideas as they relate to today’s architects and their work?

Norberg-Schulz and Heidegger are two folks looking for the answer to the same question: the role of human interaction within a place.  Heidegger does an excellent job in analyzing this by questioning what it means to “dwell,” what the relationship is between people and the earth and cosmos, and how humans nurture these things and cultivate through building.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, I took this reading to believe that humans (“mortals”) can, to a certain degree, be influenced by the design of the buildings around them, but that people for the most part experience life through the day to day interactions they have and the memories made with the people they’re with, regardless of where they are or what the walls that surround them look like (both building “walls” and the “walls” of the horizon in nature.)

Norberg-Schulz confirms this belief, and expands upon it by breaking the phenomenon down into “Identification” and “Orientation.”  Orientation, of course, deals with a sense of “emotional security” dealing with whether or not you’re comfortable with where you are or where you’re going.  “Identification,” on the other hand, deals with your comfort level with the physical environment around you, whether or not you feel that you belong there, and how it resonates with your perception of being “home.”  This applies to architecture in its most basic sense, again, in the same way it applied in Heidegger’s writing – design can help improve a sense of belonging, a sense of home, a sense of being within the earth, the sky, and the stars, but it cannot possibly dictate those notions to the full extent.

In my last post, I mentioned that the last house I lived in, while not great, was special to me because of the memories I made there with the people I cared about.  If I carry that example forward into the Norberg-Schulz text, you can begin to relate it to the orientation and identification I have with it.  Yes, it was in the Como neighborhood in the city of Minneapolis, in Hennepin County in the State of Minnesota.  That was its physical location, and when I think of that house, I do think of those other places that it was contained within.  When I think the other way, though – say I think of Minnesota – that is not synonymous with that house.  When I think of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Hennepin County, or even the Como neighborhood, I think of completely different things than the house I lived in there.  In fact, the things that remind me of that house are not related to its orientation and place at all.  I think of that house whenever I hear college kids partying in the street, because that’s what happened around that house every weekend.  I think of that house whenever I need a haircut or go to the barber shop, because my landlord who treated me so well at that house was also my barber.  These things can’t ever be designed because they are experiences – they are intangible – and they are just the thing that both Heidegger and Norberg-Schulz were exploring in their texts.  People are people, we are the same, “The way in which you are, I am” – we can build physical things, like a bridge that carries people across barriers, but as humans we all experience the built environment as an experience personal to us, like viewing that bridge as a connection to our neighbors and a symbol of unity – an experience (often involving all five senses) that can never be designed.

-J. Maternoski