The “real plight of dwelling” - Vicissitudes of Space and Design

The “real plight of dwelling”: Vicissitudes of Space and Design

Figure 1 Black Forest farmhouse dwelling and the Euclidean spacei1

“However hard and bitter, however hampering and threatening the lack of houses remains, the real plight of dwelling does not lie merely in a lack of houses […] The real dwelling plight lies in this, that mortals ever search anew for the nature of dwelling, that they must ever learn to dwell. What if man’s homelessness consisted in this, that man does not even think of the real plight of dwelling as the plight? Yet as soon as man gives thought of his homelessness, it is a misery no longer. Rightly considered and well kept in mind, it is the sole summons that call mortals into their dwelling.”

(Martin Heidegger 1971)2 The above quote, taken from Heidegger’s conclusion on his reflections on dwelling, sets the stage for the discussion that follows in which the “real plight of dwelling”3, more precisely the ongoing “search [...] for the nature of dwelling”4 in the light of mortals’ homelessness is reconsidered with regards to contemporary architectural practice. The notion of dwelling is constantly undergoing significant change. While thought of as a mere lack of houses during the time of Heidegger’s “Building Dwelling Thinking”5 lecture in 1971, the real plight of dwelling is now, again, misconceived, but this time in terms of a need for optimisation and market effectiveness. This issue is evident in the widespread application of digital design software which is used in professional practice to plan and design buildings. The most prevalent case of this is Building Information Modeling (BIM) soft1 2 3 4 5

Figure 1, Black Forest farmhouse dwelling and Euclidean space; photo collage by author.

Heidegger, Martin, “Building Dwelling Thinking”, in Poetry, Language, Thought. Trans. A. Hofstadter, London: Harper & Row, 1971, p. 161.

Ibid, p. 161.

Ibid, p. 161.

Ibid., pp. 143-61.

ware. Consequently, the use of this type of software has an effect on and permanently alters the world in which we dwell. However, instead of justifying the design of buildings with increasing reference to economic and technical statistics, architectural design could be redirected to the immediacies of human experience. Arguably, Heidegger’s real plight of dwelling cannot be addressed by digital design software and, therefore, remains neglected and unthought in architectural practice.

Heidegger’s rejection of the Cartesian understanding of the space that underpins the nature of such software, is considered as a pathway for rethinking building and gives thought to men’s homelessness. A different understanding of space and, as discussed later, of place, must be applied to building design to refresh the notion of dwelling. Conventional hand-drawing offers a potential to think about the nature of dwelling through the practice of design in light of Heidegger’s reconsideration of the arrival of place and space.

The real plight of dwelling that Heidegger proclaims is the overlapping of the theoretical conception of objects and space with what actually appears in our direct encounters with the world by the gathering of things and places.6 Homelessness in this regard is not to be understood by its common definition of a lack of shelter but rather hints at the misery of misconception of what it means to dwell.

In order to “think of the real plight of dwelling as the plight” itself, and hence give thought to men’s homelessness which is arguably reinforced by contemporary architectural practice, it is necessary to question what it is to dwell and how dwelling belongs to building. These two questions are raised in Heidegger’s “Building Dwelling Thinking”7 which will be referred to as key source throughout this essay. As its titular three undivided terms already suggest, building, dwelling and thinking cannot be separated. The reintegration of building with dwelling in one holistic unity undermines the widely accepted depiction of these two independent actions as a means-to-an-end-relationship.8 In that sense, we do not dwell because we have built. Such a displacement of dwelling neglects the fact that, all building is in itself a dwelling. Rather, we build because we dwell; because dwelling is our basic characteristic of being. The old High German word for building also means ‘to be’. Another etymological examination draws attention to the meaning of building which uncovers in “two varieties: the cherishing, protective way that farmers cultivate crops, and the construction of edifices like houses”9. Of which both are forms of dwelling.

6 7 8 9

See: Heidegger, Martin, “The Thing”, in Poetry, Language, Thought. Trans. A. Hofstadter, London: Harper & Row, 1971, pp. 163-84.

Heidegger, Martin, “Building Dwelling Thinking”, in Poetry, Language, Thought. Trans. A. Hofstadter, London: Harper & Row, 1971, pp. 143-61.

See: Braver, Lee. Heidegger's Later Writings: A Reader's Guide. London: Continuum, 2009. pp. 97-108.

Braver, Lee. Heidegger's Later Writings: A Reader's Guide. London: Continuum, 2009. p.98.

In architectural practice, however, building is understood in the narrower sense of constructing and not as cultivating or letting-be. Since Heidegger’s lecture, architectural practice has undergone rapid change. Most architects have established a strong focus towards digital simulations and attempt to quantify their attitudes and actions primarily through science and technology. Modern architectural practice is dominated by the hegemony of digital design software. Although Heidegger suggested that the primary trade of architects is in the immediacies of human experience, they now trade largely in data. The extensive use of computers common in contemporary practice today dictates the design of buildings and is now the theoretical foundation for thinking about space in the world. For a couple of decades, computer-aided design (CAD) has been the standard for planning and thinking about building in practice, replacing the traditional practice of hand-drawing and drafting. Recently, BIM software (a branch of CAD) emerged, and architectural practice faced another radical change, yet again distancing itself from Heidegger’s phenomenological way of thinking. According to the American Institute of Architects, half of all architecture practice use BIM.10 Instead of drawing lines, BIM assembles ‘smart objects’ that are representations of off-the-shelf products available on the market. Since April 2016, the United Kingdom Government requires that any public-sector project adopts this technology.11 The emergence of BIM over the past 20 years is the logical consequence of computer-aided drafting and design. Certainly, the software creates effective standards, allows a great deal of organisational simplification and reduces costs; however BIM’s support of a calculative nature of thinking and embeddedness in the construction market leaves architects “with no vocation other than decorating capital, or at least smoothing the wheels of consumption, in technically functional, spectacular, or novel works of architecture obsessed with, and directed by, exchange, rather than use, the everyday or individual and social experience.”12 Therefore, BIM manifests a certain understanding of space and leaves architectural practice with no oppositional way to think about space and hence building.

Digital design software relies on the paradigm of Cartesian space. The Cartesian conception of the world suggests a distinction between res extensa and res cogitans. In Descartes ontology, these two substances describe a dualism between extended and unthinking things, and thinking and unextended things. In that sense the human, as a thinking, unextended subject operates with extended and unthinking objects. These two separate entities, according to Descartes, stand in measurable, dimensional relation to each other in a homogeneous space. This notion becomes apparent in digital 10 Watkins, Andrew, “BIM Me Up, Scotty – Navigating Risk in Digital Practice”. AIATrust. 12/04/2018. Accessed: 02/05/20.

11 The Infrastructure and Projects Authority, “Government Construction Strategy 2016-20.” GOV.UK, 23/03/2016.

Accessed: 02/05/20.

12 Coleman, Nathaniel, “Architecture as Anticipation: The Anticipatory Illumination of Drawing”. In: Poli, R, (ed.), Handbook of Anticipation. Cham: Springer, 2018, p.4.

design software in the form of the Euclidean coordinate system within which digital objects are designed. The majority of contemporary building is, therefore, designed in “A totalised ‘world-space’ (Weltraum) that contains all capacious containers. Essential to the container model is a ‘definite loctation-relationship’ between two determinate ‘present-at-hand’ (vorhanden) entities, both of which are considered only regarding their ‘categorial characteristics’.”13 Throughout philosophical history, the Cartesian idealism of space became a more ‘natural’ understanding of space than the direct encounter with the things as gatherings in our experienced surrounding. In tandem with the digitalisation of the practice of design, the Cartesian understanding of space was accepted as the dominant mode of thinking about building and space. However, the understanding of space underlying digital design software is the reason for the displacement of dwelling. The groundedness of CAD and BIM with the traditional epistemology and ontology of Descartes undermines the interconnection of dwelling and building and, consequently, the “primacy of the inconspicuous world of total involvement as the start of an understanding of being.”14 In order to start with a primal engagement with being as the basis for design and thinking about building in architectural practice, it is necessary to trace back the origins of design and its vicissitudinous relation to space and place. The shift in the design of buildings is apparent in the etymology of the word ‘design’, as pointed out by Nathaniel Coleman. Design in Italian derived initially from progetarre and, later designo or designare. The first term includes the meaning of a meditative process; whereas, the latter is rather object-and result focused.15 The etymological shift of meaning of the word ‘design’ is analogously noticeable in practice, especially in architecture as the practice of the design of buildings. A somewhat similar distinction seems to echo in Heidegger’s “Discourse on Thinking”16 (1959). In this writing, he distinguishes between “two kinds of thinking, each justified and needed in its own way: calculative and meditative thinking.”17 Heidegger displaces Descartes’ dualistic and calculative thinking and, thus, the foundation of computation as the basis of building. In contrast to space as a neutral container of places, Heidegger instead derives space from place. As Edward Casey puts it: “Yet just as place emerges in the Cartesian abyss between consciousness and body, so it rises, Phoenix-like, from the ashes of metaphysical thought as deconstructed by Heidegger.

Thanks to such features as gathering and nearness, place becomes for him the very scene of Being’s disclosure and of the openness of the Open in which truth is unconcealed. In the 13 Casey, Edward S. The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997, p. 245.

14 Coyne, R., Snodgrass, A., “Rescuing CAD from rationalism”. Design Studies, 14,2, 1993, p. 100.

15 See: Coleman, Nathaniel, “Architecture as Anticipation: The Anticipatory Illumination of Drawing”. In: Poli, R, (ed.), Handbook of Anticipation. Cham: Springer, 2018, p.1.

16 See: Heidegger, Martin, Discourse on Thinking. New York: Harper & Row, 1959.

17 Ibid., p. 46.

end, place figures as the setting for the post-metaphysical event of Appropriation(Ereignis).”18 Place, for Heidegger, does not emerge in between two separate entities; rather, it is a unification of a familiar region and Dasein’s directional powers. “Heidegger wishes to strike in general between the contribution of the human subject and the pregivenness of its surroundings.”19 Rather than identifying as a subject which perceives objects in Descartes’ homogeneous space, mortals dwell alongside the world in regions.

“Region like world, is something Dasein is already alongside and finds itself in as already there. Just as it is true that as ‘being-in-the-world’, Dasein has already discovered a ‘world’ at any time’, so Dasein has already found itself a region. This region is precisely ‘its own discovered region,’ […]. The region is ‘discovered’ and is to this extent given, yet it is dis covered as ‘its own’ and is to this degree something for which it is responsible.”20 In other words; only after the discovery of region are mortals able to think about space in a presentat-hand manner. The separation of the ideal inner world of subject from the outer mathematical and physical world in Descartes’ philosophy is a concept that made the shaping of digital design software possible. However, this concept is alienating and leaves us in a state of homelessness. “Heidegger’s goal is to show that there is no subject distinct from the external world of things, because Dasein is essentially being-in-the-world. […] Being-in, as the most essential and existential characteristic of Dasein, signifies the expression of such terms as ‘dwelling’, ‘being familiar with’, and ‘being present to’.”21 The real plight of dwelling lies in the act of abstracting things, enabled by substance ontology, which derived in our thinking since ancient philosophy and is evermore brought to presence by the radical thinking of Descartes. This abstraction of things and the privileged, theoretical understanding of space over place and regions has shaped architectural practice and, with it, its devotion to the designing of buildings. Additionally, the realities of Descartes’ res cogitans and the space in digital design software are representations. “The consequence, in the course of Western thought, has been that the thing is represented as an unknown X to which perceptible properties are attached. From this point of view, everything that already belongs to the gathering nature of this thing does, of course appear as something that is afterwards read into it.”22 Here, Heidegger, perhaps pointed out the exact condition why so many architects feel the need to resort to retrospective search for meaning, narratives and metaphors for their built objects designed in digital software. Ar18 Casey, Edward S. The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997, p. 244.

19 Ibid, p. 249.

20 Ibid, p. 249.

21 Çüçen, A. Kadir, “Heidegger’s Reading of Descartes’ Dualism: The Relation of Subject and Object”. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, vol. 6, 1998, p. 58.

22 Heidegger, Martin, “Building Dwelling Thinking”, in Poetry, Language, Thought. Trans. A. Hofstadter, London: Harper & Row, 1971, p. 156.

guably, this “Western thought” of space in combination with the emptying of purpose in late capitalist constructing is in need for ‘some-thing’ that is read into the digitally designed object afterwards in order to make its space more hospitable for dwellers.

One glimpse of hope for place for Heidegger’s thinking on dwelling in the practice of the design of buildings, which is not biased by Descartes ontogenesis and not just mere construction of capitalistic edifices lies in hand-drawing. Although, still representational, hand-drawing recalls Dasein’s encounter with the world. “Even when we relate ourselves to those things that are not in our immediate reach, we are staying with the things themselves.”23 The recalling of immediate experience by hand-drawn design are not just representational substitutes for the things. As Heidegger demonstrated with the example of the bridge: thinking towards a location belongs to the nature of our thinking24. “thinking gets through, persists through, the distance to that location. From this spot right here, we are there at the bridge – we are by no means at some representational content in our consciousness. From right here we might even be much nearer to that bridge […] than someone who uses it daily […].”25 The design created through hand-drawing, then “never shapes pure ‘space’ as a single entity”26, as the digital software attempts. Instead, it might built, “by virtue of constructing locations, […] a founding and joining of spaces.”27 Nevertheless, to enable thinking about dwelling and to address the real plight of dwelling then, architectural practice should be encouraged to engage in a meditative design process of building out of dwelling; from our own discovered region.

Word count, excluding foot-notes and bibliography: 2200 words

23 Heidegger, Martin, “Building Dwelling Thinking”, in Poetry, Language, Thought. Trans. A. Hofstadter, London: Harper & Row, 1971, p. 155.

24 See: Ibid.

25 Ibid., p. 156.

26 Ibid.

27 Ibid., p. 157.

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Figure 1 Black Forest farmhouse dwelling and the Euclidean space; photo collage by author.