Thinking Architecture

Abstract

Phenomenology-in-architecture has gained a lot of prominence in the twenty-first century as a critique of modern architecture, both in terms of theory and practice. This chapter argues that the central argument of phenomenology-in-architecture – of moving away from an ocular-centric approach towards incorporating phenomenological aspects of kinesthetics, haptic, and the multisensory perception of the human body into architecture thinking – is lacking in its ability to comprehend and explain architecture as the object-phenomenon and to ethically think about building/architecture in terms of human and non-human agencies associated with it. This is so because it is primarily interested in understanding buildings in terms of experience or consciousness, rather than as a way of being-in-the-world. This chapter attempts to read phenomenology-in-architecture with the planet in an ethically informed manner. This chapter, after problematizing the issue, adopts Heidegger’s phenomenology to resolve the issues inherent in phenomenology-in-architecture. Whence Heideggerian phenomenology becomes problematic, this chapter attempts to go beyond the confines of classical phenomenology and uses critical phenomenology to think about architecture from a planetary perspective. In other words, this is a journey from phenomenology-in-architecture through critical phenomenology, and towards planetarity-in-architecture.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source., 2023 · DOI ↗