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Concept
Phenomenology (architecture)
Summary
Architectural phenomenology is the discursive and realist attempt to understand and embody the philosophical insights of phenomenology within the discipline of architecture. The phenomenology of architecture is the philosophical study of architecture employing the methods of phenomenology.
Architectural phenomenology emphasizes human experience, background, intention and historical reflection, interpretation, and poetic and ethical considerations in contrast to the anti-historicism of postwar modernism and the pastiche of postmodernism. Much like phenomenology itself, architectural phenomenology is better understood as an orientation toward thinking and making rather than a specific aesthetic or movement. Interest in phenomenology within architectural circles began in the 1950s, reached a wide audience in the late 1970s and 1980s, and continues today.
Edmund Husserl is credited with founding Phenomenology, as a philosophical approach to understanding experience, in the early 20th Century. The emergence of Phenomenology occurred during a period of extensive transformation referred to as Modernism. During this time, Western society was experiencing rapid technological advances and social change. Concurrently, as the theory and practice of architecture adapted to these changes, Modern architecture emerged. Consistent within the broad context of Modernism which was characterized by the rejection of tradition, systemization, and standardization; both phenomenology and modern architecture were focused on how humans experience their environments. While Phenomenology was focused on how humans can know things and spaces, modern architecture was concerned with how to create the places of human experience aligned to the modernist ethos of the time.
Architects first started seriously studying phenomenology at Princeton University in the 1950s under the influence of Jean Labatut. In the 1950's, architect Charles W. Moore conducted some of the first phenomenological studies of architecture during his doctoral studies under Labatut, drawing heavily on the philosopher Gaston Bachelard, which were published in 1958 as Water and Architecture.
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