Living and architecture
Thanks to the approach of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger, the term has been taken up by some architectural theorists; The first of them was the Norwegian architect Christian Norberg-Schulz, who, taking up the spatial character of living, developed various studies around identity, belonging, place, as well as the very meaning of human existence.
The author mentions that human identity is deeply related to places and things. It also tells us that identification and orientation are primary aspects of man's being-in-the-world, where the former is the basis of his sense of belonging. It tells us that true human freedom presupposes belonging, so “inhabiting” means belonging to a specific place.[11].
In the style of Heidegger, Norberg-Schulz approaches the term from its linguistic roots, considering that “dwell” is derived from Old Norse dvelja, which means to persist or remain. So dwelling means being at peace in a protected place. The German word corresponding to inhabit Wohnung, derives from das Gewohnte, which refers to what is known or habitual. In other words, man recognizes what is accessible to him through dwelling. Thus, the author arrives at the problem of the “reunion” of man with his environment; where gathering happens when each day of existence becomes habitual. Therefore, inhabiting would then mean bringing the world together in a concrete construction or thing.[11].
In this way, man lives when he is able to concretize the world in constructions and things. Where “concretization” or “concretion” is the function of the work of art, as opposed to the “abstraction” of science.[11] By creating an imago mundi (image of the world), the work of art helps man to inhabit. Citing Hölderlin, Norberg-Shulz mentions that dwelling, in the full sense of the term, means “poetically dwelling.” Therefore, only poetry, in any of its forms (also as the “art of living”) makes human existence meaningful; This search for meaning being the fundamental human need.[12].
In this way, the purpose of architecture – as it belongs to poetry – is to help man to inhabit; so making cities and buildings practical – or functional – is not enough. Architecture arises when “the total environment becomes visible”, that is, when the genius loci is concretized. Which happens only when the meaning of the constructions brings together the very properties of the place and brings them closer to men. Likewise, this “belonging to a place” is possible only when you have an existential support point.[12].
The Catalan architect Josep Muntañola has also studied the notion of place, returning in a certain way to the depth of living; however, his approach moves away from the Heideggerian sense, by intertwining his thesis with the logic and sociophysics of place.
In his book Architecture as a place, the author mentions that his position rejects the study of architecture as a living machine or as a natural and independent symbol, accepting the possibility of conceiving it "as a permanent process of creative, sensitive and rational reinterpretation of our living."[13] Among other things, the author addresses the logic of the place from different preambles, including the philosophical one.
From Heidegger, Muntañola takes up the concepts of what is “at hand” and what is “before the eyes”, along with the simultaneity of a “direct” – or preferring paths – and a “de-distance” or increasing the field of action. A relationship that, he tells us, the philosopher achieves on the basis of living. This being so, he mentions that Heidegger has indicated to us an application to architecture as a place of his essential paradigm of “dislocating by building” and “privileging by thinking”, structured simultaneously in living. Which, based on its correspondence with Leroi-Gourham's concepts of space, the author adopts the names of “radiant place” and “itinerant place”.[13].
Accepting that the place is always the place of something or someone, the author studies the interrelationships between that something or someone that inhabits the place and the place itself. If architecture achieves places to live, it will do so only through the transformation of physical matter; transformation that, he mentions, cannot be very far from Heidegger's “spacing a space.” Muntañola considers that, although Heidegger began his studies on the human place with etymological analyses, its scientific scope is limited, so it is not difficult to fall into trivial or erroneous significant associations.[13].
He also mentions that “place and architecture are privileged objects to study the dialectic between the logic of the place and the experience we have of it.” Also returning to Hegel's concept, for whom place is a union of space and time, in which space is concretized in a now at the same time that time is concretized in a here, the author tells us that place “is only space insofar as it is time, and it is only time in so far as it is space.”[13].
“The logic of the place always coincides (…) with the paradigm that man has had in each era regarding the interrelationships between himself and his environment.”[13] Agreement between conceptual mobility and figurative form, the logic of the place marks the measure under which humanity represents itself, which brings us closer to the “heart of architecture as a place to live.”[13].
As mentioned, in Architecture as a place, Muntañola considers the term inhabit as part of a larger whole: the place. Not reaching a specific definition of the term, but integrating it into the different significant dimensions of the place. In his analysis of the occupied place – sociophysical –, he mentions that it can be the result of three types of structural and functional polarities: the inhabiting-speaking polarity, the figurative-conceptualizing polarity and the medium-physical-environment-social polarity. That is, “the progressive differentiation of places produces a differentiation in the physical environment and the social environment and, at the same time (…) a “takeoff” of speaking from living.”[13].
Likewise, in his text Topogenesis: foundations of a new architecture, the author addresses the term “topogenesis”, describing it as the genesis of the inhabited place. Which must be studied from its complementary dimensions: poetics, rhetoric and hermeneutics. The first of them is linked to the concept of inhabiting, because although it is not mentioned literally, what Heidegger and Norberg-Schulz said in this regard, corresponds to the approaches to poetics that the author takes up, and which are also based on Aristotle, Kant and Heidegger himself.[13].
In this way, the author approaches poetics from the aesthetic dimensions of topogenesis; saying that “the beauty of inhabited places has always had, in architectural treatises, the poetic content of the intersection between construction and living.”[13] Thus, the poetics of living that he talks about is achieved through architectural design, focusing on imagination and sensation; like Norberg-Schulz, transcending the superficial questions of architecture.
The experience of living is, for Saldarriaga, "the fundamental basis of the experience of architecture in which the representation of the world definitely intervenes; not only on the physical and psychological level, but also on the cultural level.[14] In his work Architecture as an experience the author collects the ideas suggested by Heidegger around the concept of living, as one of the starting points of his thesis. “A replica of the physical world is installed inside the individual with the help of which he locates, orients, travels through territories and places, recognizes them, names them, appreciates or rejects them, in short, inhabits them."[15] The author defines inhabiting as a "complex existential phenomenon that takes place in a space-time scenario." Its formal definitions are occupying a place, living in it; and its synonyms, living, dwelling, residing in a place. Likewise, inhabiting is "affirming the presence of life in space."[16].
The circular character that Heidegger reveals, about coming to inhabit only through building, defines the closely linked essence of both concepts, deriving the existential character of architecture and the architectural character of humanity.[17] The author makes an analogy to understand the depth of building: animals delimit a territory as wide as their instincts and needs require; some build nests or honeycombs, others dig their burrows or form mounds as their own spaces; other species migrate. Humanity builds. "To live is to ensure survival, continuity and is also an affirmation of life and a defense against the fear of death. The habitation is a place deeply related to the basic anguish of the human being, it is its relief."[18] Likewise, living is related to habit, that is, to the sense of habit; thus implying the rites of everyday life.[19] “Living requires the warmth of home.”[20].