Architecture in the Age of Divided Representation: The Question of Creativity in the Shadow of Production

by Dalibor Vesely

Reclaiming the humanistic role of architecture in the age of an examination of architecture's indispensable role as a cultural force throughout history. In this long-awaited work, Dalibor Vesely proposes an alternative to the narrow vision of contemporary architecture as a discipline that can be treated as an instrument or commodity. In doing so, he offers nothing less than an account of the ontological and cultural foundations of modern architecture and, consequently, of the nature and cultural role of architecture through history. Vesely's argument, structured as a critical dialogue, discovers the first plausible anticipation of modernity in the formation of Renaissance perspective. Understanding this notion of perspective against the background of the medieval philosophy of light, he argues, leads to an understanding of architectural space as formed by typical human situations and by light before it is structured geometrically. The central part of the book addresses the question of divided representation—the tension between the instrumental and the communicative roles of architecture—in the period of the baroque, when architectural thinking was seriously challenged by the emergence of modern science. Vesely argues that to resolve the dilemma of modernity—reconciling the inventions and achievements of modern technology with the human condition and the natural world—we can turn to architecture and its latent capacity to reconcile different levels of reality, its ability to relate abstract ideas and conceptual structures to the concrete situations of everyday life. Vesely sees the restoration of this communicative role of architecture as the key to the restoration of architecture as the topological and corporeal foundation of culture; what the book is to our literacy, he argues, architecture is to culture as a whole. He concludes by proposing a new poetics of architecture that will serve as a framework for the restoration of the humanistic role of architecture in the age of technology.

Genres: Architecture

506 pages, Paperback

First published May 14, 2004

Reviews

[Dávid Pieš · Rating 4 out of 5]

How do we tend to think about architecture? What do we base our judgment on today? Functions? On aesthetics? Aren't these ways of thinking about it annoying by now? We usually don't know much about both, and they also seem like incomplete categories - even when put together.

One line of reasoning relies on the idea that this is not a coincidence. This is because both of these categories (let’s bite the bullet here) are the product of a mathematical (not reduced to just geometric) way of thinking about architecture. Thus, arguably, thinking about it as opposed to poetry. It's not that contemporary architecture lacks poetry (although maybe it does? Hhh),that’d sound cringe, arbitrary, empty etc.

The point is a poetic nature of a building has an element of representation to it and that competes with another representation now which is self-referential and mathematical (e.g. engineering oriented architecture). That is becuase it aims to be precise, logical and aims to avoid contradiction and so dialectics. If identity and a meaning can be established on a prinicples of formal logic and thus on a principle of noncontradiction we shift towards thinking about nature of architecture in terms of sufficient reason and truth. That is the self-referentiality and introvertedness Vesely has in mind. The problem is that like this architecture ceases to be a part of continuity of cultural participation. In his own words “consequence of this change has been the disintegration of communicative structure and unity of the common world.” Self-referentiality represent the author and thus is individualistic.

That architecture lacks poetry, or that its image is at least distorted, is not an empty statement, but the logical conclusion of centuries of technological and mathematical progress. What I find effective about this argument is how it illuminates the current confusion in thinking about architecture, how difficult it is to grasp the right categories. It somehow highlights the inadequacy of the categories of aesthetics and function, and how they represent only one part of a divided representation, perhaps paradoxically the mathematical one.

The meaning of architecture is complicated and confusing. What we should be doing more of, perhaps, is thinking about natural grace, the invisible charm, that unreachable - we need to focus more on the ‘Je ne sais quoi’! Which of course is Phenomenological!

A book to return to!

- I wish it would have discussed authors who aren't male, white, etc. I think the book strongly needs more divided representation really! (-1 star)

[Anthony Caicco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Prrrrrrrobably, the most influential book on my working life. Dalibor is the best.