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On
Architecture by Fred Rush
Routledge, 2009
Paperback, 184 pages
Books on architecture by philosophers
are much rarer than philosophical books by architects and
architectural academics. Of the former only Roger Scruton's
The
Aesthetics of Architecture and Karsten Harries'
The
Ethical Function of Architecture come to mind.
Now they are accompanied by University of Notre Dame associate
professor of philosophy Fred
Rush's contribution to Routledge's Thinking
in Action series. Where Scruton's book obviously tackles
the subject of architecture visually (his conservative stance
is embraced by many New Urbanist, Classicist, and other
neo-traditional architects today) and Harries' collection
of essays is broadly structured around the responsibility
of the architect in a Heideggerian manner, Rush uses Maurice
Merleu-Ponty's writings on phenomenology as the basis
for his essay on meaning in architecture.
Embodied experience is the name of
the game for Rush, and Steven
Holl is the architect who, well, embodies embodied
experience. Midway through the accessible but still dense
first chapter on phenomenology, the author discusses Holl's
recent addition to the Nelson-Atkins
Museum of Art in Kansas City, an exercise that is helpful
in instilling Rush's main argument in the reader. He also
briefly discusses Arakawa
+ Madeline Gins, though their unique brand of environmental
awareness is an extreme version lacking Holl's more applicable
though pricey precedents.
The first chapter's explanations
of phenomenology and examples of it in architecture arm
the reader with ideas for tackling the two remaining chapters,
respectively on architecture's relation to art and the urban/environmental
context. These chapters are lighter in tone than the first,
but they are far from light in subject matter, as each contributes
to Rush's argument for an architecture than acknowledges
and elevates embodied experience. In the book's final chapter
it is refreshing to hear somebody discuss New Urbanism who
is not either a staunch proponent or enemy, even though
his critique of it reiterates positions heard before.
What can be called Rush's "outsider
position" helps his argument (what he calls "snapshots
to get one thinking about architecture and its autonomy")
have equal chances of being embraced or dismissed. To me
his phenomenological approach, while not new, is commendable,
particularly in his call for how architecture can be improved
via those philosophical ideas. Bringing embodied experience
to bear on architecture is a fitting potential antidote
to both iconographic eye candy one the one hand and cheap,
uninspired buildings on the other hand, both the product
of abstraction and formalism replacing the human body's
place in architectural thinking.
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