INTRODUCTION
A rchitecture , P hilosophy and the O bfuscatory T urn … and thou shalt have no other gods but these three: Chaos, Clouds and Blabbering. Aristophanes1 The dominant role that obfuscation and philosophical posturing came to play in architectural discussions and writings during the twentieth century is one of the least studied aspects of the revolutionary changes that have shaken architecture for the past hundred years. The phenomenon became particularly vehement in the final decades of the last century, and it is fully appropriate to talk about the Obfuscatory Turn in architectural thinking during the era. This book is an attempt to contribute to the examination of this phenomenon, its manifestations and origins. Its aim is to describe and analyze the ways in which architects and architectural academics misemployed philosophy, philosophical works and philosophical arguments in order to advocate their approaches to architectural design. By “misemployment” I mean efforts that clearly indicate the poor understanding of philosophical sources, the miscomprehension of the arguments or conceptual distinctions on which they rely, the use of philosophical terminology without content or straightforward attempts to bamboozle readers, colleagues and the general public with philosophical terminology. These tendencies, I argue, are not mere incidents—rather, in important ways, they are constitutive of the profession that we call “architecture” today. They reflect many (prominent) architects’ efforts to restructure the profession and its aims in accordance with their career aims, commercial and psychological needs, often in opposition to the interests of their clients or the general public, or even the longterm interests of their profession itself. While the resulting depiction
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