Heidegger

1) Is it possible our personal interaction affects the building? Does our interaction as designers and clients affect the building?

While a building is simply a building, and a dwelling implies a building to which one lives, the difference between the two ideas becomes blurred by our interactions with them. To most people the White Stag Building is simply a building, yet to us architecture students it becomes a dwelling. I believe this is because we have our own (very small) areas of the building which we perceive as belonging to us. These spaces are our studio desks, and for many architecture students we spend more time at this location than our actual home. We develop relationships with our neighbors around us and go on mini travel adventures to visit those whose desks are not near ours. We eat meals in the studio and sometimes even sleep there as well. Within the studio a community develops as each student gets to know the people around them better. Each studio section then becomes it’s own ‘neighborhood’ and people tend to dwell mostly within their own ‘neighborhood.’ Therefore it seems clear to me that buildings are affected and perceived differently based on the interactions of those who occupy it.

 

2) Is it possible that Heidegger’s search through the old language for meaning is a search for authenticity? Is it valuable to search for authenticity in designing/building architecture? What is one example?

I believe he is searching the old language for authenticity because he knows there is always someone or something that came before. He has determined that searching the old language can be his best way to find what that was. It is incredibly valuable to search for authenticity in designing and building architecture because it is a crucial way to see what has already been done and whether or not it worked, we just choose to call it ‘precedent studies’ instead. The search for authenticity is also a search for meaning. What kind of messages to certain forms convey? Monumentality is more of a demonstration of wealth, knowledge, and power than it is about the actual use of the building. This is clearly seen when you look at the classical Greek and Roman forms that are embodied in the architecture of certain government buildings today. The Capitol building in Washington D.C. was designed using those classical forms in order to display in a built form the same ideas as the ancient Greeks and Romans: strength, education, and influence.

 

3) Mortals dwell in that they save the earth. Mortals dwell in that they receive the sky as sky, the sun and moon their journey, the starts their course, the seasons their blessings and inclemency. They do not try to change what they were born into and will continue when they are gone. Can we design and build with this same sense of permanence?

I think we can design and build with this same sense of permanence but their is a fine line that must be navigated carefully. Buildings that survive the ages prove they were of good design. These buildings serve many different functions and uses over those many years and therefore stand as models of efficiency because they do not need to be destroyed and rebuilt constantly. This saves time, money, effort, and most of all natural resources. These buildings also serve as a record of those who built them. Statues and monuments, however, need to be approached much more carefully as they are not intended to be used by occupants but rather they stand as symbols. In the case of Easter Island, the inhabitants used cut-down trees to roll their monumental statues to their final locations. They were so focused on their statues they didn’t realize they were exterminating the forest on their tiny island until it was too late. In building these statues they directly contributed to their own demise. They chose to end their mortal existence in order to live as gods through their monuments of permanence.

– B. Kilgore