FAT SPACE / FLAT SPACE

osvaldo valdes, lecturerarchitecture department university of california

berkeley 1990

POETICALLY MAN DWELLS ...the phrase by following it. "... poetically man dwells .. ." If need be, we can imagine that poets do on occasion dwell poetically. But how is "man"-and this means every man and all the time-supposed to dwell poetically? Does not all dwelling remain incompatible with the poetic?But where do we humans get our information we are to think of what is called man's existence by way of the nature of dwelling; for another, we are to think of the nature of poetry as a letting-dwell, as a-perhaps even the-distinctive kind of building. If we search out the nature of poetry according to this viewpoint, then we arrive at the nature of dwelling.

Martin Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter New York: Harper and Row, 1971.

Marc Antoine Laugier can perhaps be called the first modern architectural philosopher.—John Summerson

carved, molded, shapedconstructed or assembled from parts

carved, molded, shapedmultiple wall_centrifugal

constructed or assembled from parts single wall_centripetal

National Assembly Building of Bangladesh / Louis Kahn

Exeter Academy Library, Exeter NH / Louis Kahn