Heidegger

Heidegger makes an important distinction between a building and a dwelling.  Many of the places we use on a daily basis we do not dwell in, but simply use and occupy.  He says building is dwelling in that to build is to dwell.  While I found his rather lengthy exposition of this idea through language too heavy and unconvincingly narrow (German is not the foremost language of the world), there is something in the idea that building is dwelling which is worthwhile.

Heidegger spends quite a bit of energy on ones neighbor.  Nachbar, he says, in old German has its roots in Old English, where it means near dweller.  Near dwelling, if building is dwelling, calls to mind modern communities, such as the Amish, where building is a community activity, an activity of neighbors, near dwellers.  Hear is Heideggers most worthwhile point.  A building is a dwelling only with human interaction, nachbar.

Heidegger’s search for authenticity in language is weak at best.  Language is a great tool for understanding and meaning, but the use of language to validate a point cannot stand to logic.  His use of language to illustrate a point, such as explaining the origins of neighbor, is helpful but does not offer definitive structure to his main point.  Language is a human creation and is constantly morphing.  Just as you would not build your house on shifting soils, you should not build your argument upon shifting reasoning.  However, the search for authenticity is a necessary endeavor in designing and building.  Successful architecture is architecture that is grounded in reason and place.  A false or meaningless building cannot be a dwelling, only an amusement.  Compare a building such as Fallingwater, by Frank Lloyd Wright, in balance and engaging its environment as well as its occupants, to any of the museums by Frank Gehry, totally ungrounded in place.

Heidegger states that humans must preserve the fourfold in order to dwell.  One of this fourfold is that they save the earth.  This idea points at a sense of permanence in the world, one we cannot change while we are here.  Designing within this context is what makes architecture authentic.  The Frank Gehry building does not relate to this world, but some other, and not to humans, but to some other scale.  On the other hand, Fallingwater is of this world and of humans.  Fallingwater seems as if its risen from the earth beneath and will one day return.  Fallingwater is dwelling, Frank Gehry is mearly inhabited.

-jd gutermuth