Dwelling inn Time

by

Amir Ali Charmchi, B.F.A

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairsin partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Architecture

In

M. ARCH (Professional)

Carleton UniversityOttawa, Ontario

2015, Amir Ali Charmchi

AbstractWhen enabled by an adequate built-environment, dwelling as an act results in an unprecedented level of human achievement towards better welfare of everything and everyone within its realm. This writing exhibits this potential by framing an understanding of the built-environment as both the setting for as well as the product of dwelling.Humanitys instinctive need for shelter has placed the house at the crossing point of rational and emotional action. Therefore exploration of social, cultural, political, and economic conditions and their reflection on the theorization, education, production, and evolution of residential architecture is necessary for making architecture that is, not simply frugally conscious, but also socially meaningful.Finally, this thesis utilizes the resulting hypothesis, supported by historical and contemporary examples of built-objects, towards developing an architectural proposal that integrates concepts of user agency, spatial flexibility, variable density, and financial feasibility in the form of a medium rise residential complex sited in Ottawas Centretown neighbourhood.AcknowledgementsMy family for their support and generosity through my years of study.My advisor who supported me during this undertaking. Showing me the true spirit of learningthat is to embrace the moments spent thinking, exploring, imagining, and dreaming. My professors, who together guided my inclinations and responded to my curiosities.My fellow colleagues here at Carleton, with whom I have countless memories. The city of Ottawa, which I have been proud to call home for the past four years.Table of ContentAbstract2Acknowledgements3Table of Content4List of Illustrations5The Matter, introduction1The Concept1Being-in, Being-in-the-world, and Being-in-time2Rationalism, Communication, and Interface5Authenticity, Idle Talk, and Curiosity11The Content1The Object, The Myth, The Product,3Space, Time, Communication11Contingency, User Agency, Vernacular,17The Context1The Policy, The Practice, The Outcome,4The Project, 381 Kent St Ottawa14Commencement, conclusion1Bibliography1List of IllustrationsThis document is a draft for the print copy.

The Matter, introductionDwelling is an abstract term. Dwelling as an act refers to a range of actions from the experience of the most inexplicable human sentiments, to the exercise of the highest level of pragmatic functionalism. Dwelling is also frequently used in reference to a place where one or more individuals live. The broad etymological use of the term dwelling, therefore, brings a difficulty to its conceptual definition.[endnoteRef:1] But in an era when scientific and technological developments constitute the referential field for the description and organization of human affairs,[endnoteRef:2] within which philosophical inquiry aims to eliminate contingency,[endnoteRef:3] what then is preventing the dominant forces of reductive rationalism from firmly defining the true meaning of dwelling with respect to human-kinds existence? [1: Peter King, Private dwelling: Contemplating the Use of Housing (New York: Routledge, 2004), 17.] [2: Sylviane Agacinski, Time Passing: Modernity and Nostalgia, trans. by Jody Gladding (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 5.] [3: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Lectures on the philosophy of world history: introduction, reason in history. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 28.]

An unassuming response to this question is that the innately abstract nature of dwelling renders it so broad and obscure as to defy strict definition. From this answer then arises a new set of questions. Namely: How is an abstract concept like dwelling able to escape the luckless faith of consistent and indiscriminate renunciation most speculative concepts face from the reductive rationalism of modernity that is new-thinking? [endnoteRef:4] And while rapidly advancing scientific and industrial developments are forcing their most adamant opponents into submitting to reductive rationalismthis great new comprehensive telos beholden to scientific common sense as the irrefutable and universally accepted currency, lest they be condemned to face the reality of their increasingly irrelevant stance.[endnoteRef:5] How then can dwelling maintain its relevance to the practice of building and the formation of the built-environment in the face of the brute forces of logical pragmatism? [4: George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Science of Logic (London: Allen & Unwin;, 1969), 7-8.] [5: Hegel, Science of logic, 8-9.]

Political theorist Peter King provides a telling answer to these two questions by pointing out that it is dwellings two rudimentary characteristics, its innate ambiguity and its ubiquitous contextual underlying, which enable dwelling to maintain a relevant stance alongside reductive rationalism.[endnoteRef:6] Together these two traits empower dwelling to uphold a degree of contingency in favour of its future actions, and place it in direct defiance to the principle objective of new-thinking. From this position dwelling is able to engage with, navigate through, and mediate between the seemingly incongruent yet interdependent realms of human-kinds mortal-being. In other words, in its abstraction dwelling reflects its true virtue onto the multifaceted domain of human-kinds mortal-being, guiding all that is banal towards a meaningfully conscious human existence. [6: King, Private dwelling: Contemplating the Use of Housing, 17.]

But contrary to dwellings ceaseless conceptual transcendence, its contextual prevalence is bound to the tangible realities of the built-environment, and consequently to both the abilities and the limits of human-kinds capability for building. As philosopher Martin Heidegger explains,Dwelling and building are related as end and means. However as long as this is all we have in mind, we take dwelling and building as two separate activities. By the means-end schema we block our view of the essential relations. For building is not merely a means and a way towards dwellingto build is in itself already to dwell.[endnoteRef:7] [7: Heidegger, Building, Dwelling, Thinking, 348. ]

With this outlook, the seemingly absurd paradox of dwellings restricted-prevalence becomes infinitely meaningful. In other words, building and dwelling find meaning in a mechanism of mutual concerns and distinct traits where they engage one another to produce a meaningful built-environment in support of meaningful existence. But there remains a weakness in this mechanism. For despite their mutual concerns, building and dwelling each have their own set of distinct apprehensions that can disrupt their mutual engagement, and negatively affect their product: the built-environment. And while, there is no question that dwelling is native to human-kinds mortal-being, it is critical to determine what truly qualifies human-kind to build its own mortal environment. To seek a resolution to this quandary through the reductive outlook of industrial rationalism, limited as it is by its fetish for material, design, and labour standards would be brutishly uninformed. For, architectural problem-solving through formal innovations of functional, algorithmic, and aesthetic concerns, or any sort of compositional method, is neither good architecture,[endnoteRef:8] nor does it qualify as dwelling. But since both acts of building and dwelling are worthy of questioning and thus worthy of thought,[endnoteRef:9] what truly qualifies human-kinds capability for building and dwelling becomes its capacity for thinking. Therefore, only when human-kind is informed of its own dwelling nature and begins thinking and acting accordingly, can it begin to build a meaningful environment suitable to its mortal-being. [8: Alberto Perez-gomez. "Ethics and poetics in Architecture." In Towards an Ethical Architecture: Issues within the Work of Gregory Henriquez, 67-116. (Vancouver: Blueimprint, 2006) 70.] [9: Heidegger, Building, Dwelling, Thinking, 354. ]

To be truly informed on dwelling thus requires active communication between building and thinking as entities within the realm of dwelling, via the act of dwelling. Heidegger explains that thinking, much like building, belongs to dwelling. They are, each in its own way, inescapable for dwelling. [endnoteRef:10] But neither one alone is sufficient for dwelling, unless they both interact with and learn from one another through a relationship led by the act of dwelling. More precisely, neither building, nor thinking nor both are qualified to fully inform dwelling. However, both acts can present dwelling with a comprehensible outlook and sensible access to their workshop of long experience and incessant practice,[endnoteRef:11] that is, the built-environment. [10: Heidegger, Building, Dwelling, Thinking, 363.] [11: Heidegger, Building, Dwelling, Thinking, 354.]

As a product of architecture, the built-environment is the setting for the constructive qualities of both scientific reason and speculative thought to come together, and provide human-kind with a platform for an active, and meaningful worldly presence. Architectural theorist Alberto Prez-Gmez expounds on the existential notion of this scope by stating:Architecture does not communicate a particular meaning, but rather the possibility of recognizing ourselves as complete in order to dwell poetically on earth and thus be wholly human. In other words, good architecture offers societies a place for existential orientation. It allows for participation in meaningful action, conveying to the participant an understanding of his or her place in the world.[endnoteRef:12] [12: Perez Gomez, "Ethics and Poetics in Architecture", 68-69.]

But simply knowing what it means to dwell, and what constitutes thoughtful acts of dwelling and building, need not imply that meaningful dwelling inevitably occurs. In fact, the contextual variability to meaning within the act of dwelling makes general assessment of the meaning within the act of building and built-object nearly impossible. So before a built-object can be deemed truly meaningful, it must first be capable of finding its own meaning as the content of dwelling, rather than seeking to define its context. This irony is a direct challenge to the virtue of thinking. For the built-object is but the product of thinking, the embodiment of an enterprise of rational acts informed by the exercise of science, and if left uninformed by the experience of dwelling, it would be a mere object of use, incapable of imbuing any true meaning. Thus far, the instinctive reaction of new-thinking to this challenge has been to supply a constant stream of context to the means-and-end relationship between building and dwelling. The correlation between the tangible traits of building and adequacy within mortal-being, driven by the expediency of means-and-end schema, compels new-thinking towards conceptualizing a false virtue upon sustaining the banal exercises of mortal sustenance.At their utmost predominance, the utilitarian preferences of new-thinking have led a pressing demand for the scientific elaboration and cultivation of materials and methodstowards strengthening its ever growing impression over the conditions of material production and human consumption.[endnoteRef:13] These efforts have proven relentless in seeking to define the determinants of adequacy of the built-environment. Such pragmatic exercises, supported by new-thinkings means-and-end approach inevitably gain momentum since they carry with them the superficial appeal to material imperatives. Renowned political theorist Hanna Arendt confronts these phenomena in her definition of their contemporary context, stating that: [13: Hegel, Science of Logic, 9.]

Mans propensity to truck and barter is the source of exchange objects, ...as his ability to use is the source of use things. These are capacities of man and not mere attributions of the human animal like feelings, wants, and needs, to which they are related and which constitute their content. Such human propensities, are as unrelated to the world which man creates as his home on earth, as the correspondent properties of other animal species, and if they were to constitute a man-made environment for the human animal, this would be a non-world, the product of emanation rather than of creation. Thought is related to feeling and transforms its mute and inarticulate despondency, as exchange transforms the naked greed of desire and usage transforms the desperate longing of needsuntil they all are fit to enter the world and to be transformed into things.[endnoteRef:14] [14: Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 168.]

With regards to dwelling, new-thinkings approach has been to subjectively define a series of quantitative measures of adequacy for the built-object, which are then supported and exercised through the objective means of industrialized production and scientific common sense. As the primary determinant of the act of building, thinking is responsible for the complex cognitive exchange that takes place across and between all entities of dwelling. And only in recognition of dwellings true virtue, can thinking begin to identify the true determinants of adequacy of built-environment. These determinants are far from new-thinkings presumed measures of mortal sustenance, and are rather found in dwellings own primordial traits: ambiguity of meaning and contingency in action. New-thinkings challenge in recognition of dwellings virtue reaches its height in its attempts towards interpretation and working out the Temporality of Being.[endnoteRef:15] For time is the only universal entity of dwelling that cannot be manipulated by universal theory. In response to this challenge thus far, new-thinking has resorted to techniques for measurement and assimilation of market value towards time. New-thinking has deployed an economics according to which time must be productive, useful, and profitable. (And in doing so giving the impression that human-kind) must forever gain time, because time itself gains (it) something else."[endnoteRef:16] But the reality of human-kinds conditional existence at best represents an extremely crude exercise of this very human undertaking. [15: Heidegger, Being and time, 40.] [16: Agacinski, Time Passing: Modernity and Nostalgia, 6.]

In light of technological advances in all spheres of human activity and the long shadow of reductive rationalisms control over human affairs, humanist speculation is struggling to maintain its relevance to human existence. This view gives humanities an inherent value in the context of the design disciplines and architecture in particular.[endnoteRef:17] Where architectures primary concern becomes providing human-kind with an adequate built-environment that is both frugally conscious as well as socially meaningful. For, architectural meaning is not merely one of semantic equivalence; rather it occurs in experience.[endnoteRef:18] The understanding of this relationship, once joined with the embracement of the human-kinds temporal existence, can lead to meaningful Being, embodied in a phenomenological exercise of dwelling. [17: Leonidas Koutsoumpos, inHumanities In Soumyen Bandyopadhyay et al. The Humanities in Architectural Design: A Contemporary and Historical Perspective. (Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2010), 16.] [18: Perez -Gomez, "Ethics and Poetics in Architecture.", 68. ]

This is a state in which reductive reason is no longer preoccupied with overcoming time through defining a universal truth, but is rather concerned with nurturing the temporality of human existence. A condition where time becomes both the necessity of and the destiny for serving the spirit of dwelling.[endnoteRef:19] Simply put, good residential architecture does not find its meaning in the good performance of a dictated set of functions nor in its ability to communicate preconceived ideals in connection with so-called standards of living. Residential architecture derives its value from its ability to negotiate the existential dualities of human-kinds Being, towards a meaningful Becoming, guided by the spirit of dwelling. [19: Agacinski, Time Passing: Modernity and Nostalgia, 21.]

This study takes on the task of finding a spatial addressing for the existential inquiries of dwelling. The following paragraphs represent this writings structural approach to the three notions of dwelling, thinking, and building, towards addressing its main concern of residential architecture.Chapter one begins by laying down the conceptual grounds for discussion, upon Martin Heideggers concept of Being-in, and the questions around the existential states of Being-in and Being-in-the-world.[endnoteRef:20] It uses these concepts to explore the primary ethical challenges faced by new-thinking in light of its newly found self-awareness. It then returns to the question of adequacy of the built-environment, with a curiosity for the possibilities of interdisciplinary data analysis, for finding an ethical and mutually beneficial platform of communication across the intangible and tangible realms of human-kinds existence. [20: Heidegger, Being and time, 84. ]

Chapter two embarks on an examination of modernist theorization and exercise in architectural design and production, with an outlook on both their intended and actual effects on the content of the mortal-realm. It begins by exploring modernist approaches to the built-object, its design, and its production. The chapter then seeks an understanding of the possible conceptual expressions of material content of the built-environment, and the means by which the design intents can be imbedded as meaning within the built-object. Lastly, this chapter will explore the potentialities of vernacular design in providing timely contingency and user agency in residential architecture.Chapter three pursues a contextual understanding of the current condition of Canadas housing stock. It does this by examining practices in industrialized building, architectural consultation, and socio-economic policymaking which dominate the conditions of residential development of the country in the past seven decades. The chapter then seeks to find means for alleviating some of the precariousness of these conditions via the existing building and economic practices of Canadian housing production. Finally, both conceptual and contextual findings of this study are applied to the formation of a site specific architectural proposal for a residential development in Ottawas Centretown neighbourhood, answering these concluding questions: How can good residential architecture facilitate a relative synchronicity between human-kinds temporal existence, and the building practices that provide the receptacle for the sustenance of its mortal-being? More precisely: How can good architecture provide buildings that simultaneously particulate and aggregate the human ideals of mortal transcendence into instances of contextual imminence?

The ConceptWith dwelling at the centre of its concerns, it may seem natural for this study to begin by defining and contextualizing the notion of dwelling. But this supposition is fundamentally flawed, as time and time again, dwelling has proven that it inherently resists strict definition. Therefore, rather than risking futility in a desperate search for a contextual definition for dwelling, this study begins with exploring the concept of dwellings own existential condition, as well as the constituting entities of dwellings role as the contextual under laying of human-kinds existence.This chapter is informed by the philosophy of Martin Heidegger and his exploration of meaning within the notions of Being and Being-in (as) the formal existential expression for the Being of Dasein, (that is) Being-in-the-world.[endnoteRef:21] In so doing it will explore the notion of temporal consciousness and its necessity for reaching an authentic existence. From there, it will continue building a broader conceptual underlying, by exploring human-kinds cognitive efforts to provide context to and thus to find meaning in its own affairs, beginning with Hagels analysis of the exercise of logical thinking, followed by Friedrich Nietzsches writings on the vulgar traits of reductive spirit, leading to Hannah Arendts masterful explanation of the human condition. Finally, this chapter sets up a discussion of around adequacy within Dasein, -that is authenticity of action towards the potentiality-for-Being. And it will question new-thinkings hesitations in taking a curious approach to the ambiguities of dwelling, followed by an examination of potentiality within the exercise of cross paradigm measures of adequacy. [21: Heidegger, Being and time, 80.]

Being-in, Being-in-the-world, and Being-in-timeIn his book Being and Time, Martin Heidegger examines the initial dogmatic interpretation of meaningful Being. Heidegger initiates his argument by establishing that a universal impression of Being makes it the emptiest of concepts and renders any questioning about its meaning redundant.[endnoteRef:22] Examining both theological and philosophical presumptions of spatial distinction between the tangible and intangible realms of human-kinds existence, he highlights the necessity of context in the formation of an existential interpretation for Being. [22: Heidegger, Being and Time, 21.]

Heidegger supplements the notion of existence or Dasein, defined then as Being in a place empty of spatial representation,[endnoteRef:23] with the thought of Being-in-the-worldthe compound expression for a unitary phenomenon[endnoteRef:24] that is existence. This is the essential structure of Dasein (and what gives) insight into (its) existential spatiality.[endnoteRef:25] Heidegger writes: [23: Hegel, Science of Logic, 83.] [24: Heidegger, Being and time, 78.] [25: Heidegger, Being and time, 83.]

Being-in is a state of Daseins Being; it is an existentiale. So one cannot think of it as the Being-present-at-hand of some corporeal Thing, Nor does the term Being-in mean a spatial in-one-another-ness of things present-at-hand, any more than the word in primordially signifies a spatial relationship of this kind. In is derived from innanto reside, habitare, to dwell An signifies I am accustomed, I am familiar with, I look after something.[endnoteRef:26] [26: Heidegger, Being and time, 80.]

Heideggers etymological examination of the word in distinguishes the term Being-in as the formal existential expression for the Being of Dasein,[endnoteRef:27] which itself is ontically distinguished by the fact that, in its very Being, that Being is an issue for it.[endnoteRef:28] In other words, Heideggers expression of the term in, grants Dasein with a Being alongside the world in the sense of being absorbed in the world.[endnoteRef:29] This is what ultimately empowers human-kind to dwell, and thus find meaning, within the distinctions of its own existential and mortal realms of Being.[footnoteRef:2] [27: Heidegger, Being and time, 80.] [28: Heidegger, Being and time, 32.] [29: Heidegger, Being and time, 80.] [2: It should be made clear that, despite Heideggers use of a spatial vocabulary to describe the state of Dasein, Dasein itself is by no means a spatial state. Heidegger places great emphasis on the importance of understanding this matter: Being alongside the world never means anything like the Being-present-at-hand-together of Things that occur. There is no such thing as side-by-side-ness of an entity called Dasein with another called world. (Heidegger 1962, 81) Meaning that as a determinant of worldly conditions, Dasein is separate from worldly things. But as worldly conditions are its concerns, its falling subject to these very conditions is inevitable. For despite being separate from worldly things, Dasein is not worldless, and thus it always present-at-hand in the world, (Heidegger 1962, 82) which makes it subject to worldly conditions.]

Dasein is distinct from Being, in that it is both a subject to and a determinant of the conditions of Being. Indeed it is this characteristic of Dasein that makes up the conditionality of Being. It is within this uniquely human existential duality that Dasein must dwell. Nowhere is the dichotomy between the worldliness of Being and the worldlessness of Dasein more of a challenge than in the interpretation of Being-in-time. Heidegger explain that Dasein instigates a question of authenticity towards its own being by laying a claim to primordiality. A question that is rooted in the discrepancy between the inescapable condition of Being towards death and Daseins potentiality-for-being-a-whole,[endnoteRef:30] or Becoming. And since times passing and thus Being-in-time is inescapable, Dasein must find authenticity in a meaningful engagement with time. [30: Heidegger, Being and Time, 276-277.]

Heidegger points out that the emptiness imposed upon Being by its universal interpretation indeed makes it possible to individualize it(s meaning) very precisely and for any particular Dasein.[endnoteRef:31] But even this meaningful emptiness alone, cannot infuse Being with a meaning. For as long as the existential structure of an authentic potentiality-for-Being has not been brought into the idea of existence, the fore-sight by which an existential interpretation is guided will lack primordiality.[endnoteRef:32] According to Heidegger, this structure can be found in the interpretation of Dasein in terms of temporality (and the) phenomenological destruction of the history of ontology, with the problematic of Temporality as our clue.[endnoteRef:33] [31: Heidegger, Being and time, 63.] [32: Heidegger, Being and time, 276. ] [33: Heidegger, Being and time, 63.]

In this way of thinking time becomes the one platform where the certainties of Being and ambiguities of Becoming can begin to engage in a dialectic interchange towards a meaningful existence.A continuous Becoming, understood as successful human endeavors through a conscience human presence, accounting for the demand for contingency within human affairs.

Rationalism, Communication, and Interface The contemporary state of the world, one commonly and perhaps imprecisely referred to as the modern world, reflects centuries of human-kinds effort to reconcile the incongruent conditioning forces of its own Being. These efforts reach their current level of impact, beginning at the Age of Reason with the philosophical analytics of human-kinds existential condition and the scientific questionings of the speculative principles of theology. With its direct, practical, and immediate reflection on the tangible realm, scientific reason has managed to weaken theoretical speculation from its status as the guardian of abstracts dedicated to the contemplation of the eternal, into a mere mode of expression for feelings, popular practicality, and erudite historiography.[endnoteRef:34] The lack of any immediate reflection on the tangible conditions of the mortal realm prevents speculative thought from effectively opposing scientific reason.[footnoteRef:3] [34: Hegel, Science of Logic, 8. ] [3: In addition to this disadvantage, speculative thought faces another set of obstacle preventing it from effectively opposing scientific reason. The first obstacle is that opposing any entity requires the recognition of its presence, something that is irrefutable given the strictly tangible nature of rationalism. The second obstacle is that examining an entitys virtue must take place within its own realm. Although it is possible to oppose the virtue of some of the products of rationalism, opposing the virtue of the practice is nearly impossible since the virtue of scientific practice is the practice itself.]

But despite its inherent advantage over speculative thought, scientific reason cannot escape the banality that is rooted in its indisputable physical presence. Facing a self-imposed challenge to its own authenticity, scientific reasons frantic search for virtue takes on an unprecedented level of contextual withdrawal causing it to rationalize an introverted interpretation of virtue, and undertake incessant efforts towards producing context and this meaning for its activities. In addition to an indiscriminate renunciation of the ambiguous traits of human existence, scientific reason cautiously avoids the period of fermentation that goes with the beginning of every new creation (that is the) past,[endnoteRef:35] and eschews the historical context to human-kinds Being. Blessed with pragmatic imminence, scientific reason takes on the role of history supplying the ersatz context to humanitys being, and in effect shapes the modernist concept of the universal human. In this way new-thinking alleviates the pressure from the concerns of its own underdeveloped strength, to a point where it demands the acquisition and reinforcement of its referential principles from its own science.[endnoteRef:36] [35: Hegel, Science of Logic, 9.] [36: Hegel, Science of Logic, 9.]

Such is the dominant paradox to the reductive spirit of the well-intended new-thinkers, who believe to have a grasp on the measures of human unreason and self-deception, (but) are usually themselves in the grip of some ancient fantasy.[endnoteRef:37] Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche confronts these realists by calling on them: [37: Bernard Williams, introduction in The Gay Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), ix.]

You sober people who feel armed against passion and phantastical conceptions and would like to make your emptiness a matter of pride and an ornament you call yourself realists and insinuate that the world really is the way it appears to you: before you alone reality stands unveiled, and you yourselves are perhaps the best part of it But aren't you too in your unveiled condition all too similar to an artist in love? And what is 'reality' to an artist in love! Your love of 'reality' that is an old, ancient 'love'! In every experience, in every sense impression there is a piece of this old love; and some fantasy, some prejudice, some irrationality, some ignorance, some fear. We are not nearly as strange to one another as you think, and perhaps our good will to transcend drunkenness is just as respectable as your belief that you are altogether incapable of drunkenness.In its attempts to gain control and power over what it recognizes but cannot validate, new-thinking becomes disillusioned with its own ideals, and can only rest when it manages to transform the world into a constant ideal state. The thought of such transformation is made possible by the uniquely conditional nature of human existence.This characteristic of best described in a book titled The Human Condition by renowned political theorist Hannah Arendt. In her book Arendt expounds on the realities of human-kinds grasp over its own conditional existencea knowledge that demands understanding of the conditions through which humans have come to be, as a metaphysical conception of passive existence, as well as the conditions in which humans are that is the result of vita active or active life.[endnoteRef:38] Arendt explains: [38: Arendt, The Human Condition, 7-9.]

In addition to the conditions under which life is given to man on earth, men constantly create their own, self-made conditions, which, their human origin and their variability notwithstanding, possess the same conditional power ad natural things. Whatever touches or enters into a sustained relationship with human life immediately assumes the character of a condition of human existence. This is why men, no matter what they do are always conditioned beings.[endnoteRef:39] [39: Arendt, The Human Condition, 9.]

Arendt equates the conditioning impact of the forces drawn in by human efforts with that of the external forces of human-kinds conditional existence. In other words, human-kind as a species is unique in that it has the capability to determine, construct, and direct the conditions of its own existence within the built-environment. This existential realization however, finds its immense potential in reductionist rationalism. The limited scale of the manner in which human-kind is able to implement its desired forces onto its own existential condition is no match to that of the forces beyond its control. This discrepancy in scale and tempo of action between the conditioning human and natural forces of human-kinds existential condition is the root of human-kinds concernsthat is to preserve and safeguard its experience within the mortal realm.[endnoteRef:40] Such instinctive apprehension explains much of modernitys penchant for reductive classification of knowledge and material production.[footnoteRef:4] [40: Heidegger, Building, Dwelling, Thinking, 351.] [4: This is also a beginning point for the general dismissal of the collective nature of vita activa, by the narrow vision of use-oriented production. This necessary recognition of the inherent social nature of vita activa is one pointed out by Arendt, and one that this writing will return to when addressing the adequacy of the built-environment. Arendt observes: Things and men form the environment for each of mans activities, which would be pointless without such location. She elaborates this point, by stating that all human activities are conditioned by the fact that men live together, but it is only action that cannot even be imagined outside the society of men. (Arendt 1958, 22) The key to her statement is the use of the plural form men in reference to vita activa. This is the critical point where thinking can escape the banality of the mortal and provide an adequate environment for the human inclination towards the experience of the eternal. For Arendt shows that the experience of an infinite presence is possible by homo fabers exercise of continuous transcendence in vita activa which, at the same time, is a testament to human-kind as a social beings. Between labour, work, and action within vita activa it is only action that can lead to an eternal-being that is inevitably a social-being.]

This same outlook also explains some of rationalisms motivation for maintaining the intangible within the realm of scientific reality, and the questionable intents behind its selective approach to speculation. There are two insights that shine a light on this question. One is that logical thinking is a learned skill, therefore it is only effective when all participants have a shared understanding of its methods. This is a matter of communication. Logic must be communicated by its thinkers and understood by those who are to use it. The other is the matter of the interface, as the setting in which logic is to be applied is extremely important in the successful application of rationalism. This dichotomy can be understood quite symmetrically (with the built-environment at its centre, where as an artifact it takes on the role of) an interface between an inner environment, (dwelling), the substance and organization of the artifact itself, and an outer environment (built-environment), the surrounding in which it operates.[endnoteRef:41] This becomes an indisputable matter of context, the role of speculative thought in its formation, and scientific reasons motivation for maintaining human thought within its realm.[footnoteRef:5] [41: ] [5: This challenge of communication is acute when logic is applied to human affairs such as the act of dwelling. Although a reasonable understanding of logic may be expected from the dweller, it is logic that is left with the burden of facilitating and negotiating the exchange between the dweller and the built-environment. This responsibility however, presents logical thinking with a new paradox of virtue. For, the value of logical thinking lies in its ability for refraining from abstractions through the experience of sciences while at the same time displaying in itself, a spirit of universal truth, rather than another perception alongside other realities. (Hegel 1969, 37)]

In the shadow of universal reason, logical thought, and practical science, the only thing that prevents the complete dismissal of speculative thought has become its formal utility as a subject of public instruction.[endnoteRef:42] The motivation behind this exercise however, is not one of mere utility but rather one inherent to being human,[footnoteRef:6] and the human acts of Theoria, or contemplation (and) the experience of the eternal.[footnoteRef:7][endnoteRef:43] Proper communication amongst the reductive practices of rationalism, one reaching beyond logic to include its determinants is critical towards conceiving and maintaining a truly adequate built-environmentthe primary interface for reductive reason and the physical embodiment of the act of dwelling. [42: Hegel, Science of the Logic, 8.] [6: This insight is not to be mistaken for an effort at interdisciplinary dialogue. It is rather a tool for hierarchical exercise of persuasion, fueled by a patriarchal fetish of assertion, and self-interest.] [7: This is not to be confused with the religious notions of eternal existence, as it is referring to the residual effects of human activity on the conditions of human beings.] [43: Arendt, The Human Condition, 20-22.]

Recognizing the ineffable ambiguity of dwelling as the primary determinant of a meaningful Being is the first step towards easing some of new-thinkings preoccupation with seeking a logical reconciliation to the uncertainties of Being. As Heidegger point out,No matter how rich and firmly compacted a system of categories it has at its disposal, (rational thinking) remains blind and perverted from its ownmost aim, if it has not first adequately clarified the meaning of being, and conceived this clarification as its fundamental task. (For) scientific research is not the only manner of Being which (Dasein) can have, nor is it the one which lies closest. [endnoteRef:44] [44: Heidegger, Being and time, 31-32.]

This idea leads to the conclusion that scientific and speculative thought are not separate, nor can they be examined separately. And most importantly neither can fit through the appropriate cognitive means for exploration of the other. Yet both realms are related through Dasein, and thus must seek for their meaning in relation to Dasein.

Authenticity, Idle Talk, and CuriosityIt must be established that despite its predominance within modernist practice, reductive rationalism is neither a modern phenomenon nor is it exclusive to modernism. Rather, reductionism is a basic characteristic of human cognition and a logical device for understanding of, engaging with, and utilizing a given interface, towards reaching an objective. This understanding can be applied to thinking with regards to dwelling as its objective. In this regards, the built-environment becomes the interface with which thinking must engage in order to facilitate dwelling. This relationship is not without complexities due to the temporality of dwelling, and the existential interdependency between dwelling and its mortal embodimentthe built-environment. Faced with the responsibility of negotiating the complexities of this multifaceted relationship, thinking is also in a constant internal battle of virtue, over the question of its own authenticity. And although rationalism is guided to seek authenticity in the humanities by its own philosophy, any notion of potentiality quickly loses ground to the tangible imminence of pragmatism. As an enterprise conceived through scientific reason, rationalist enquiry finds its immediate synchronicity with the tempo of the mortal realm. This universal tempo dubbed the Western hour has proved effective towards easing much of lifes temporal ambiguities.[endnoteRef:45] But despite its universality, this reductive tempo is not the sole culprit in rationalisms elusive quest for authenticity. Another significant contributor to this challenge is the collective nature of vita active and its manifestation within dwelling that is the belonging to mens being with one another.[endnoteRef:46] This primal oneness centred on mortal sustenance results in a false illusion of authenticity that is the care of mortal-being via mortal-belonging. Heidegger describes this crisis best by stating [45: Agacinski, Time Passing: Modernity and Nostalgia, 6.] [46: Heidegger, Building, Dwelling, Thinking, 351.]

With Daseins lostness in the they that factical potentiality-for-Being which is close to it [the tasks, rules, and standards, the urgency and extent, of concernful and solicitous Being-in-the-world] has already been decided upon. The they has always kept Dasein from taking hold of these possibility of Being. The they even hides the manner in which it has tacitly relieved Dasein of the burden of explicitly choosing these possibilities. It remains indefinite who has really done the choosing. So Dasein makes no choices, gets carried along by the nobody, and thus ensnares itself in inauthenticity. [endnoteRef:47] [47: Heidegger, Being and time, 312.]

The phenomenon Heidegger warns about is the conceptualization of normative standards for living which began in the late nineteenth century and reached its peak in the years following World War II. In its scientific approach towards the study of human behaviour, new-thinking adopts a perception of living in terms of population norms, means, and other measures of central tendency. (Befitting) positivist attitudes of social progress through the rigorous application of scientific principles to human problems.[endnoteRef:48] Grounded by their empirical performance, these measure have surpassed the concerns of particular individuals and households as determinants to adequacy of dwelling-space. [48: Peter, Rowe, 48.]

Adequacy as a general term refers to the satisfactory performance of a product in respect to a given scope. But this description is only valid when the relationship between a product, its usage, and its user, is blessed with a high degree of stability and relevance. Achieving such general terms of relevance is unfeasible in light of the ambiguous nature of dwelling. Adding to this difficulty is the life-tempo of dwelling that continuously challenges its mortal counterpart. Contesting rationalisms authenticity in the practice of defining a universal scope to the house product; while also attempting to maintain relevance via defining and evaluating its own measures of adequacy.Thus far the response of rationalist thought has been to maintain its assertion in suppressing the challenges of Dasein through becoming ever more efficient in describing its products scope and at the same time withdrawing further away from the all that is ambiguous. Heidegger calls this exercise Idle Talk, one that scientific rationalism uses to project a faux-sense of conceptual understanding of Dasein, by finding false agreements within the they and presenting curiosity and ambiguity in such a manner as to indicate that they are already interconnected in the Being. (and that) we must now grasp the kind of Being which belongs to this interconnection. The basic kind of Being which Belongs to everydayness.[endnoteRef:49] This phenomenon is manifested in the systematic organization of scientific knowledge, expressed and exchanged as quantitative content, and supported by a self-determined contextthat is quantitative measures of adequacy. [49: ]

Since the early years of the twentieth century, the tangible success of the industrial production has succeeded in persuading many that the new atmosphere of subject-centred rationalism is a suitable platform for engagement across all fields.[endnoteRef:50] This thinking suggests that human action is not inherently rational and thus may be subject to evaluation and restriction. In an article titled Competing Paradigms in Qualitative Research, academic theorists Egon Guba and Yvonna Lincoln pointed out a variety of implicit problems with the sole quantitative analysis of social matters such as housing. [50: ]

Guba and Lincolns main criticism takes aim at the common practice of subjective prioritization of variables simultaneous with the projection of an objective nature; a practice which can results in the selective inclusion of favourable variables and the exclusion of factors that pose a threat to the theoretical rigour, value, and the virtue of a study.[endnoteRef:51] The desire to find the truth can lead to the formation of a self-imposed illusion of truth suited to the limitations of the method, effectively dismissing the bigger picture and the entirety of the situation in question. Worst still, this practice presents a direct opposition to the exercise of curiosity in dwelling, by stripping it from its ambiguity. [51: ]

In response, Guba and Lincoln propose a method of cross-paradigm analysis which they describe as an act of constructive relativism through assuming multiple, apprehendable, and sometimes conflicting social realities that are the products of human intellects, but may change as their constructors become more informed and sophisticated.[endnoteRef:52] While giving prominence to side-by-side evaluation and application of both quantitative and qualitative measures in design and assessment of a systems performance, Guba and Lincoln recognize the necessity for imbedded evolutionary traits within man-made systems,[footnoteRef:8] calling for a dialectic engagement between both the evident and the obscure determinants of a adequacy. [52: Egon G. Guba and Yvonna S. Lincoln. "Competing Paradigms in Qualitative Research." In Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln, Handbook of Qualitative Research, 105-117. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1994, 111.] [8: Guba and Lincolns position is reflective of Hegels scepticism of scientific practices in philosophy, where he writes: in as much as philosophy is to be science, it cannot borrow its method from a subordinate science, such as mathematics, any more than it can remain satisfied with categorical assurances of inner intuition, or can make use of arguments based on external reflection. (Hegel 1969, 9) Hegels statement is a warning of the potential threats of pragmatic uber-reality of scientific reason, and a call for a dialectic engagement of both the evident and the obscure elements of human cognition, allowing human-kind to adequately think, build, and ultimately dwell in the world. ]

This dialectic rationale suggests that truth is found in neither scientific understanding nor its theoretical determinants alone. Truth is found in the spirit of a dialectic interaction where reason and understanding are not simply bound by their interdependence, but are rather dissolved in their differences.[endnoteRef:53] This challenges the validity of universal truth through scientific reason in favour of a contextual relevance found via conscious recognition of the intent behind practice.[footnoteRef:9] Through a skillful engagement with its determinants, modern thinking may step past the objective abstractions of idealism and instead find meaning within a phenomenological spirit[endnoteRef:54] where transcendent validations of reason and the imminent realities of existence, each by their own virtue, engage in a continuous dialectic interchange[endnoteRef:55] towards becoming the truth. [53: Hegel, Science of the Logic, 10.] [9: As Heidegger explains Only if the inquiry of philosophical research is itself seized upon in an existentiell manner as a possibility of the Being of each existing Dasein, does it become at all possible to disclose the existentiality of existence and to undertake an adequately founded onto logical problematic. But with this, the ontical priority of the question of being has also become plain. Dasein's ontico-ontological priority was seen quite early, though Dasein itself was not grasped in its genuine ontological structure. (Heidegger 1962, 34) Everything looks as if it were genuinely understood, genuinely taken hold of, genuinely spoken, though at bottom it is not; or else it does not look so, and yet at the bottom it is. (Heidegger 1962, 217)] [54: Hegel, Science of the Logic, 28.] [55: Hegel, Science of the Logic, 80.]

The ContentThe tangible traits of human-kinds mortal affairs have persuaded new-thinking to grant the acts of mortal sustenance a priority within modernisms hierarchal structurethat is reductive rationalism. The built-environment as the material embodiment of dwelling, the most human of acts, therefore has been highly effected by the overenthusiastic practices of utilitarian building. As Heidegger explains in his observation of the pragmatic exercises in modernist housing production, the means-end schema for residential building is reassuring and to the good; residential buildings do indeed provide lodgings; lodgings that are cheap, easy to keep, well lit and ventilated, and sometimes well planned. Yet these mortal exercises, no matter how precisely determined, do not qualify as dwelling.[endnoteRef:56] [56: Heidegger, Building, Dwelling, Thinking, 348.]

Dwelling demands a level of sophistication in building design beyond the mere satisfaction of building standard, spatial programs and predetermined feedback. Dwelling takes place in an environment capable of active reception and resonance of the dwellers actions. This quality cannot be fully programmed into a built-object as a pre-determined programming for dwelling-space is in direct contradiction with the ambiguity inherent in the act of dwelling. A dwelling-space may never be evaluated via its aesthetics nor its special program, nor a combination of these and other predeterminations. Rather, dwelling space finds its value in its embodiment of skilfully distributed and useful spatial and programmatic contingencies that are conceived within its design, exercised by its construction, and maintained through the entire time of its occupancy. This chapter seeks to understand new-thinkings reasoning behind its reductive (de)contextualization of dwellings mortal content.Using principal examples of modernist architectural theories conceived during the time between World War I and World War II, this chapter explores modernisms determination for reaching a technological engagement, at the sheer limitations of modern housing production compelled by the practices of the second industrial revolution.[endnoteRef:57] Moving forward, the writing examines the pedagogical quests of modernism seeking to master the chaos of the world, and the strife that are part every human life.[endnoteRef:58] The chapter explores the notion of an architectural product, and how its highly contextual nature sets it apart from other fabricated objects of use. Working through this understanding, the chapter examines capabilities of design for organizing a contextually meaningful dialectic platform for dwelling within the built-environment. At the end, the chapter returns to its initial sensibility that is the quest for spatial contingency and user agency found in the vernacular design of vernacular built-objects. [57: ] [58: ]

The Object, The Myth, The Product,With the tangible realm as its primary concern, new-thinking has found itself preoccupied with the object, as the object provides a theoretically infinite platform for its deconstructionist exercises. In finding virtue within its own practice, new-thinking can indeed maintain a relative contentment in engaging with the mortal realm. And because, given the right context, the output of these engagements are typically purposeful, they must indeed be considered relevant and valuable within the mortal realm and thus towards mortal actions. New-thinking, however, jeopardizes its own virtue, by making its work subject to the futilities of the ordinary and banal, and thus historicizing its own practice. This phenomenon is referred to as the crisis of the object and is the root of new-thinkings paradox of virtue. [endnoteRef:59] [59: Hartoonian, 2.]

A window towards understanding these notions is found in an overview of three affirmations by three pioneers in modernist architecture, namely: Ludwig Mies van der Rohes essay: Industrialized building, Walter Gropius announcement of: Principles of Bauhaus Production [Dessau], and Le Corbusiers manifesto: Towards a new architecture: guiding principles. These three documents have withstood the decontextualizing test of time and continue to be celebrated within the canon as monuments of architectural approach to material, design, and production. [footnoteRef:10] [10: Proper interpretation of these theories demands a contextual awareness of the circumstance at the time of their conception. For these statements, each has a claim as the utmost fitting and timeless guideline towards the perspective and prospective vision of a new world, were all conceived at a critical point in history which radically transformed the economic, political, and social, landscape of the world. This era saw the fervent increase in the use of reductionist exercises in industrialized production; as well as indiscriminate demystifications of speculative thought and its existential relevance in favour of newly found rationalistic determinants within utilitarian value. An era which does not simply present new-thinking with a challenge to its objectiveness and its virtue, but rather projects on to it crisis of identity, by questioning its unstable grasp of reality. ]

The great and charmingly pragmatist Mies van der Rohe writes in his essay titled, Industrialized building: I see in industrialization the central problem of building in our time. If we succeed in carrying out this industrialization, the social, economic, technical, and also artistic problems will be readily solved.[endnoteRef:60] [60: ]

For Mies the ubiquity found in industrialized building is one capable of being complementary to the ubiquitous nature of dwelling. This is a sentiment with a fair amount of truth, for even the crudest application of industrialized building embody very clear evidence of the intentions within action and thus reveal context. Rather than acknowledging the contextual necessities of building, however, Mies sets out to separate building from its context in an attempt to push it towards engaging with its concept. As he explains: The question of how industrialization is to be introduced is easily answered once we know what stands in the way. The supposition that antiquated forms of organization are the cause is incorrect, they are not the cause but the effect of a situation, and they in no way crash with the character of the old building trade [endnoteRef:61] [61: ]

But context is unique and thus virtuous towards both building and dwelling. Bearing with it the gift of meaning for the built-object and the built-environment, context should rarely if ever be condemned to indifference, rather it must always be deemed worthy of careful reconsideration where necessary.A primary part of modernisms formation of scope to the house-product, has been the assertive attribution of particular physical characteristics and identifiable building-types for housing production. A practice which essentially demotes dwelling to an act of mortal sustenance and fails to take account for anything other than its use as a purpose built product and takes its scope from measurements of irrelevant metrics. In its self-serving outlook, this failure reduces the act of dwelling from its position as a determinant to the act of building to a mere subject of its product, the built-environment. [footnoteRef:11] [11: According to Arendt, the ideal of usefulness permeating a society of craftsmen like the ideal of comfort in a society of labourers or the ideal of acquisition ruling commercial societies is actually no longer a matter of utility but of meaning. She lays the responsibility for this phenomenon on homo fabers innate incapability to understand the distinction between utility and meaningfulness. Facing the trivial and mundane presence of worldliness, homo faber seeks to identify with the implicit use of its physical surroundings. In stablishing a connection with the environment through the object, human beings reach out to the non-conscious existential meaning embodied in the house, institutions, the city, the nation, nature, and so on.]

A notable example of such an assertive stance is the declaration of the Principles of Bauhaus Production [Dessau] by the renowned forerunner of modernist design and education, Walter Gropius. In it he expresses The Bauhaus wanting to serve in the development of present-day housing, from the simplest household appliances to the finished dwelling. Seeking by systematic practical and theoretical research in the formal, technical and economic fields to derive the design of an object from its natural functions and relationships.[endnoteRef:62] [62: ]

What Gropius describes as a natural and functional relationship has clear ambitions towards the sustenance of things and is to a high degree timeless. It can also be taken as the beginning of a convincing argument for the virtue of sustenance. Rather than building on this very credible stance, Gropius chooses to follow his initial statement, by making a very bold claim on possessing an apprehension of human wants and needs by stating, Modern man needs a modern home appropriate to him and his time, equipped with all modern devices of daily uses.[endnoteRef:63] There are two clear flaws in this statement, one is that by mentioning time Gropius effectively asserts a claim to knowing what time is to bring; or even the harder claim of being able to arrest time in its place. The second flaw is in claiming that the actions of daily use indeed qualify as human acts. [63: ]

But Gropius definition for the purposefully objective and naturally functional product of his suggested practice resembles nothing more than a myth when he states: An object is defined by its nature. Design(ed) ...to function correctly. (It may be) a container, a chair, or a house. - It must serve its purpose perfectly, that is, it must fulfil its function usefully, be durable, economical, and beautiful. Forms will evolve that are often unusual and surprising, since they deviate from the conventional.[endnoteRef:64] [64: ]

Little contemplation on this definition reveals that Gropius feels that the response to ambiguity of dwellings worldlessness is to impose a faux-ambiguity to the worldly banal; a statement that resembles a defensive position rather than a caring stance.[footnoteRef:12] [12: Interestingly enough, in taking a stance against the value of convention, Gropius sets his sight on defining a new set of conventions, for modern design. He states that: On the whole, the necessities of life are the same for the majority of people. The home and its furnishing, and their design is more a matter of reason than a matter of passion. There is no danger that standardization will force a choice upon the individual, since, due to natural competition, the number of available types of each object will always be ample to provide the individual with a choice of design that suites him best. The reality of commodity-like treatment of housing within the market however is far from the balanced exercise of choice described here.]

But perhaps the most questionable element in Groupies statement, is the imposed separation between the conception of the built-objects design and its utilization by the perspective user. At a larger scale, Gropius theory can be interpreted as one intent on imposing a separation between the formation of the built-environment and the experience of dweller, and thus hindering the effective illumination of the act of dwelling and all that it brings to existence, rendering the built-object a mere object of use, and thus meaningless.[footnoteRef:13] [13: Arendt confronts this inherent perplexity of utilitarianism by stating: utility established as meaning generates meaninglessness. In the world of homo faber, where everything must be of some use, meaning itself can appear only as an end in itself which actually is either a tautology applying to all ends or a contradiction in terms. ]

Theories such as Gropius principles of production, are examples of modernisms introverted rationale found in the mythical belief in a practice of architecture as a social art (with a traditional discourse towards) the avant-garde,[endnoteRef:65] combined with the typical contradictory bourgeois ideology of (technocratic) return to an unchangeable nature.[endnoteRef:66] They are the result of new-thinkings crisis of identity due to its inability for achieving a more than an unstable grasp of reality (that) doubtless gives (new-thinking) the measure of (its) present alienation.[endnoteRef:67] They are the reason behind much of the precarious characteristics of the built-environments following industrialized building. [footnoteRef:14] [65: ] [66: ] [67: ] [14: As explained by Roland Parthes,(new-thinking) constantly drift(s) between the object and its demystification, powerless to render its wholeness. For if (new-thinking) penetrate(s) (the object), (it) liberate(s) it but (at the same time) destroy(s) it; and if (new-thinking) acknowledge(s) (the objects) full weight, (it) respects it, but restore(s) it to a state which is still mystified. It may appear rather discriminating to exert such negative deconstruction onto one document, in order to draw a critical line across the entire modernist doctrine. It should be established that the assertive stance found in early modernist theories must be given the benefit of the doubt and be understood as enthusiastic exercises of speculative wanderings within rationalist thinking. The apprehension begins once this assertion becomes inherent and thus becomes the primary concern of the exercise itself. With regards to architecture, as it will be explored further in the writing, this misguided concern can have dire effects on the built-environment and quality of life of all inhabitants.]

Only after accepting and understanding the significance of the inherent ambiguities of life as well as the realities and necessities of industrialized production, architecture can begin to properly allocate the necessary levels of abstraction to the functional structures of the built-environment, resulting in a product that functions beyond its physical characteristics with better overall performance.[endnoteRef:68] But the contemporary imperatives of the market economy effectively places housing in the same category as other products subject to conditions of the commodity market. Defining a scope for the house-product thus becomes an inevitable part of maintaining the practice of residential construction in tune with the market economy. [68: Karl Ulrich. "The Role of Product Architecture in the Manufacturing Firm." Research Policy 24 (1995): 419-40, 421.]

But despite being regarded as the forbearer to modern design practice, the modern process of normalizing residential environments predates the practice of modern housing production, and is indeed the result of a dire need to address the congestion and squalor of the industrial city.[endnoteRef:69] As early as the mid-nineteenth-century, basic matters of public health, safety, and welfare such as adequate light, ventilation, fire protection, public facilities and support services, and lastly appropriate building practices, have been systematically standardized as sets of quantitatively defined minima, establishing consistency and order to building and thus minimize risks to both occupants and investors of industrialized housing.[endnoteRef:70][footnoteRef:15] [69: ] [70: ] [15: Still this claim carries a certain level of truth, with respect to sustenance of mortal-being. The standardized housing scope dominating residential construction practice today is the result of a long tradition of humanist culture (of design) seriously challenged by the apparent efficiency and adequacy of instrumental representations and models, over the past two-hundred years. Placed against a background of a tendency toward internationalization of culture and the instrumentalization of life, politics, and power,]

Yet even the best intentioned attempts at creating balance between performance, use, and construction of housing, risk succumbing to generalized misreadings that depicts them as favouring matters of production and tending away from serving a meaningful exercise of dwelling. [footnoteRef:16] [16: The proven functionality of modern construction in the twentieth century has fuelled an unprecedented exuberance for what has come to be known as modern design, thriving on a predictable environment of rationalized demands and pragmatic industrial production. In light of the great technological changes of the early twentieth century, this eagerness for rationalism has resulted in a general and generalized misreading of much of modernist architectural theory. ]

One such misread theory is Le Corbusiers canonic manifesto: Towards a new architecture: guiding principles. In it Le Corbusier points out two disciplines of modernist practice that are separate from and yet complimentary to a successful exercise in new architectural design. These two disciplines are, the Engineers Aesthetic and Mass-production Houses. Le Corbusier states: The Engineers Aesthetic and Architecture are two things that march together and follow one from the other: The engineer inspired by the law of Economy and governed by mathematical calculations, puts us in accord with universal law. The architect, by his arrangement of form, realizes an order which is a pure creation of his spirit; he affects our senses and provokes plastic emotions; he gives us the measure of an order which we feel to be in accordance with that of our world.[endnoteRef:71] [71: ]

He calls this product the House-Machine, the mass-production house, healthy (and morally so too) and beautiful in some way that the working tools and instruments which accompany our existence are beautiful.[endnoteRef:72] One that accommodates humanistic sensibilities via the inevitable functionality of the new way of building. [72: ]

Theories such as Le Corbusiers House-Machine have given many an incorrect yet comforting impression that housing is merely a technological problem and therefore is no more complicated than any other machine.[endnoteRef:73] But a more accurate reading of this theory actually suggests that the house is the mechanism where rationalized functionality is to engage with the uncertainties of the act of dwelling and the spirit of the dweller. In other words, the house-machine is to be a tool. A tool that enables its inhabitants to dwell in time. It is the materialization of human indifference, standing-in for the dweller on tasks that are beyond his or her physical capability and below his or her intellectual interest.[endnoteRef:74] [73: N. J. Habraken, Supports, an Alternative to Mass Housing (London: Architectural Press, 197), 17.] [74: Habraken, Supports, an Alternative to Mass Housing, 18.]

The architecture Le Corbusier calls for is one of practice, analysis, and experiment. Its virtue comes from its responsiveness not just to the needs but to the acts of dwellers. The outcome of its application is closer to an artifact than a commodity, despite being geared towards mass production. It is vernacular-engineering geared towards producing vernacular houses that thrive on the uncertainties of the human life taking place within it.[endnoteRef:75] The true modern house does not revolt against the past.[endnoteRef:76] It instead provides the dweller with a contentment with respect to the economic and material conditions of the built-environment, freeing up resources towards pursuing human ambitions.[footnoteRef:17] [75: ] [76: ] [17: Most early examples of standardized housing are indeed reductive exercises of quantitative measures, geared towards serving qualitative factors of human-kinds needs and wants. In fact, modernist conceptualization of normative living standards, is made possible through the scientific study of human behaviour. These standards are grounded on the best available empirical evidence, and may be highly beneficial in tying social progress to its material platform. Despite these facts, identifying, isolating, and at times removing the ambiguities of dwelling, have become character traits of reductive approaches to the questions of housing.]

Therefore, it appears that technology, (in this respect building technology) as the characteristically modern way of engaging the world, is humanitys best tool for mediating and altering time and space relationship,[endnoteRef:77] and thus able to provide homo faber with the necessary platform for engaging with the temporal nature of Being. To achieve this, the built-environment must embody and communicate its own wonders to the dweller. Ones that are conceived within the design of built-environment and communicated via the built-object. [77: ]

Space, Time, CommunicationAs the product of architecture, the built-environment has the potential to excel beyond its Being, as a mere sum of buildings, places, and spaces; (towards Becoming a platform for communication and) development of knowledge, organization and techniques of life. [endnoteRef:78] Such is possible via a design geared towards facilitating the physical embodiment to a phenomenological exercise of dwelling. [78: Maco Frascari, "Elegant Tectonics, Clearly Confused Representations, Franco Albini and the Wonder of Lightness." In A Carefully Folded Ham Sandwich: Towards a Critical Phenomenology, ed. by Roger Connah, 127-146. (Montreal: FAD Design House, 2013), 127.]

The late architectural scholar Marco Frascari, masterfully describes the platform for meaningful dialectic exchange and communication between designs intended spatial qualities and dwellings ever-evolving wants and needsthat is, phenomenological architecture. He writes: The constructed world is the physical embodiment of the art of living well and of all the arts that make good living possible. In its physical expression (architecture) is an incorporation of the history of arts and their diverse relationship within time and space in a specific place.[endnoteRef:79] [79: Marco Frascari, Monsters of Architecture: Anthropomorphism in Architectural Theory (Savage: Rowman & Littlefield, 1991), 17.]

A contextual breakdown to the modes and realms of this exchange, in reference to the practices of industrialized building is found in architect Amos Rapoport book The Meaning of The Built Environment: A Nonverbal Communication Approach,[footnoteRef:18] [18: Any act of communication among people, whether verbal or non-verbal, is conducted through organizing and communicating information within space and time. The environment plays its part in this exchange by reflecting, modulating, channeling, controlling, facilitating, and inhibiting communication, between dwellers. As the most recognized means of human communication, language is regarded as a highly characteristic cognitive skill used by human beings. Language is unique in the sense that it serves platform for both processing and transferring information. It must be noted that in this paper the term s verbal and linguistic are not referring the study of syntax and grammar but rather are concerned with the interpretation of linguistic strings of two-dimensional visual stimuli, or other non-linguistic stimuli, which form the clues for interpretation of communicated information, ibid77.]

In his book, Rapoport classifies the exchanges which occur within the built-environment into three sets of relationships between things and things, things and people, and people and people. He explains that sensory communication of meaning occurs within space and time, via a complex and continuous interrelationship across as well as amongst both things and people.[endnoteRef:80] Such a multifaceted exchange calls for a high level of ubiquity, found only within a meaningful act of dwelling. [80: Rapoport, The Meaning of the Built Environment: A Nonverbal Communication Approach, 178.]

Space is a widely used term within architectural discourse and an essential trait of the built-environments physical presence. The term space generally refers to the three-dimensional extension of the world.[endnoteRef:81] But perhaps a more accurate connotation to the word space can be gleaned by examining its earliest use in architectural theory,[footnoteRef:19] found in a book by American architect Claude Fayette Bragdon, titled A Primer of Higher Space: The Fourth Dimension. Bragdons artful description of space propels its concept past the common associations with enclosure, or the three-dimensional form of the physical aspect of architecture, and towards a notion of space as a property of the mind.[endnoteRef:82] Bragdon describes space as the invisible form bound between built planes.[endnoteRef:83][footnoteRef:20] This seemingly self-evident analogy highlights an important duality between subjective and formal exploration of built-form, within both realms of theory as well as the practice of architecture.[endnoteRef:84] [81: Rapoport, The Meaning of the Built Environment: A Nonverbal Communication Approach, 179.] [19: It is important to note that despite its centrality in architectural discourse, the term space entered architectures vocabulary only in the 1890s. In an article titled: Architecture is the Pattern of Human Mind in Space, Christina Malathouni attributes the first explicit use of the term space to an English-speaking American architect named Claude Fayette Bragdon, who himself adopted the notion from his German contemporaries. Bragdons book A Primer of Higher Space: The Fourth Dimension is a wonderful example of poetic yet technical writing and a beautifully illustrated window into the mind of an inquisitive person with a profound interest in scientific developments and strongly influenced by the mystical basis of Pythagorean philosophy of numbers. ] [82: Malathouni, "Architecture Is the Pattern of Human Mind in Space: Claude F. Bragdon and the Spatial Concept of Architecture", 553.] [83: Bragdon, A primer of higher space: The fourth dimension, 2.] [20: Familiar both to the eye and the mind are the space systems of one, two, and three dimensions; that is lines, planes, solids. Lines are bounded by points, and themselves bound planes; line-bound planes in turn bound solids. What then do solids bound? Higher solids: four dimensional forms (invisible to sight) related to the solids we know as these are related to their bounding planes, as planes to their bounding lines. ] [84: Malathouni, "Architecture Is the Pattern of Human Mind in Space: Claude F. Bragdon and the Spatial Concept of Architecture", 565.]

Bragdon finds the practical and utilitarian perception of three-dimensional space in architecture insufficient, and one that at best can only result in a partial understanding of spatial reality limited to physical conditions.[endnoteRef:85] Thus, he calls for a spatial understanding found only in the fourth dimension of space. A dimension where an amplitude of unfamiliar motions by various departments of nature[endnoteRef:86] can begin to form a relationship with the known conditions of the physical realm. Bragdon claims that in order to perceive the transcendental as real, human-kind must first adapt an intentional consciousness of space.[endnoteRef:87] [85: Bragdon, A primer of higher space: The fourth dimension, 5.] [86: Bragdon, A primer of higher space: The fourth dimension, 6.] [87: Bragdon, A primer of higher space: The fourth dimension, 15.]

What Bragdon describes as the fourth dimension is not a new region of space but rather a measure of change, of growth, and of relations which cannot be expressed geometrically.[endnoteRef:88] These phenomena manifest themselves in the temporal-realm of Being and are rationalized within time. A proper perception of potentiality for action within the built-environment requires a tandem examination of both space and time. In other words, a combined exercise of spatial and temporal consciousness is necessary for making architecture that is receptive of the potentiality-of-Being found within act of dwelling.[footnoteRef:21] [88: Bragdon, A primer of higher space: The fourth dimension, 17.] [21: In this very same regard, Heidegger writes: By casting light on the source of the 'time' 'in which' entities within the- world are encountered--time as within-time-ness-we shall make manifest an essential possibility of the temporalizing of temporality. Therewith the understanding prepares itself for an even more primordial temporalizing of temporality. In this is grounded that understanding of Being which is constitutive for the Being of Dasein. Within the horizon of time the projection of a meaning of Being in general can be accomplished. (being and time 278)]

The engagement between the two realms of space and time, outside the utilitarian rationale of time, -that is the western hour, can bring transparency to the temporal nature of Being, to a point where temporality becomes (the) intelligible way Dasein is, and can be. (Where it) makes up the primordial meaning of Dasein.[endnoteRef:89] This relationship transcends architectural understanding of three-dimensional space into a new mode that is space-time consciousness. Here architectural design can begin to move past its preoccupation with the physical boundaries of the built-objects and focus its intentions on the now transcendental fourth dimension of space: time.[endnoteRef:90] [89: Heidegger, Being and Time, 278.] [90: Bragdon, A primer of higher space: The fourth dimension, 16.]

Since human activities are inherently temporal, they require time, are distributed across time, and incorporate temporal rhythms and repetitions. Respectively many behaviours that are used to establish boundaries, (and) assert or deny identity (within the built-environment are), in fact temporal, although while they are happening they need and use settings and other physical elements.[endnoteRef:91] Therefore, just as human-kinds perception of time directly influences its behaviours towards the built-environment and other human beings, the built-environment equally effects the behaviors of the dweller towards themselves as well as towards other dwellers.[footnoteRef:22] [91: Rapoport, The Meaning of the Built Environment: A Nonverbal Communication Approach, 180.] [22: This marks one of the biggest threats to modern reason which most modern thinkers do not dare to mention let alone grapple with. If the spatial consciousness of the dweller manages to surpass the spatial facts of the built-environment, the building, the building-type, and all that has resulted in its production can be rendered irrelevant, meaningless, and in many cases utterly useless. ]

As time is the primary dimension in which human interactions occur, the built-environments treatment of time becomes critical to the welfare of human relationships and development. Frascari depicts the built-environments embodiment of time as a kind of corporal time machine where the past, the present and the future are related architecturally (and) through memory.[endnoteRef:92] Through its handling of time the built-environment affects human-kinds existential condition in nearly the same level as the human activities which blessed built-environment with its physical presence in the first place.[footnoteRef:23] [92: Marco Frascari, Monsters of Architecture: Anthropomorphism in Architectural Theory (Savage: Rowman & Littlefield, 1991),s 61.] [23: Unable to exist outside the mortal realm and characteristically incapable of resolving its dilemma of meaninglessness homo faber tend to seek fulfilment in terms of its own activity, and consequently reduces its one finite and most valuable asset, time, into mere means for serving its mortal presence. It is important to be aware of the potential danger of this introverted exercise of modern thinking, which by aestheticizing and technicizing modern flux deprives it of its contingency, and thus effectively freezes time and empties space of its social content. True consciousness of time and its relation to space allows architecture to redeem the the transitory, fluid, and contingent aspects of modernity towards designs that result in receptive, inclusive, and adequate dwelling-spaces. ]

As the setting for social exchange the built-environment mediates, enhances, and suppresses the relationships and interactions that occur amongst dwellers. The rate and quality of communication between dwellers varies with respect to ways in which distance, exposure, and proximity, are modulated by the spatial qualities of the built-environment. Determined by architectural design, these sensory mediations are critical to building of healthy and progressive dwelling-spaces.[endnoteRef:93] In other words, good architecture provides a quality social environment, by mediating social engagements through careful articulation of public, private, and shared spaces, via the proper arrangement of necessary non-linguistic stimuli within the built-object. [93: Amos Rapoport. The Meaning of the Built Environment: A Nonverbal Communication Approach (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1990), 181.]

These and other design intentions, material and building limitations, all maintain their presence within the built-object, where they serve as tangible indicators of overall sophistication of the design, intent and value.[footnoteRef:24] Building elements are like grammatical entities whose particular juxtaposition connote certain meanings embodied in the metaphysics of humanism.[endnoteRef:94] A proper exercise in tectonics is what brings meaning upon the abstractions of pure spatial form. The appropriate and successful use of details starts with design and extends into the meaningful use of a built-environment. [24: Complimentary to the spatial stimuli of architectural form is the presence of sensory clues typically embodied in building material. The tactile qualities of a material that form the built-environment, serve to either ground or propel the dwellers imaginative comprehension of the designs intended spatial expression. Separate from the organization of space, details (are) the minimal units of signification in the architectural production of meaning. By demonstrating various levels of architectural production, the detail serves witness to the tandem presence of human act and material form that is the built environment. ] [94: Gevork Hartoonian, Crisis of the Object the Architecture of Theatricality (London: Routledge, 2006), 10. ]

Material expression, when executed correctly, triggers an emotional search for knowledge, a desire to build, a state of hope,[endnoteRef:95] in the act of dwelling. Frascari provides an unmatched conclusion to this architectural phenomenon by stating: [95: Maco Frascari, "Elegant Tectonics, Clearly Confused Representations, Franco Albini and the Wonder of Lightness." In A Carefully Folded Ham Sandwich: Towards a Critical Phenomenology, ed. by Roger Connah, 127-146. (Montreal: FAD Design House, 2013), 131.]

The cognitive aspect of imagination provides the foundation for a rigorous analogical knowledge allowing architecture to evade the dilemma of a rationalism that gives us only a banal choice between matter and mind or material or form. Forging links between then and now, it can demonstrate the transhistorical permanence of the products in tectonic expressions. imagination in architecture cannot be reduced to a technology or to a humanity or to the use of technology by the humanities.[endnoteRef:96] [96: Frascari, Marco, Ge wiz, p88.]

This outlook burdens the built-environment with a central role in accommodation and maintenance of the spiritual desires and well-being of the dwellers. Despite modern attempts at substituting dwellings spirit with the so-called scientific common sense, the dweller still recognizes the rarest of places where architecture begins to resonate with its dreams, incites, personal thought, and imagination, and open up the space of desire that allows it to be at home even while remaining incomplete and open to its mortal characteristics.[endnoteRef:97] [97: Perez Gomez, "Ethics and Poetics in Architecture, 68.]

In other words, (residential) architecture cannot find its meaning in the good performance of a programmed set of functions of utilitarian sustenance, nor in its ability to communicate and provide preconceived ideal of timeless standard to mortal-being. Good (residential) architecture is focused on expressing its intended spatial possibilities, rather than its prescribed and preconceived utilities. It finds true meaning in the ability to resonate and respond to the acts of dwelling that occur within its product, the built-environment.Contingency, User Agency, Vernacular,So far modern theory has relied on new-thinkings reductive practice of rationalizing, referencing, quantifying, evaluating, and even marketing time, towards maintaining a reasonable perception of time which allows it to engage with the primordial entities of the tangible realm. Yet despite this relative success, modern practice fails to have the same grip on time as it does on other universal entities, meaning it cannot produce, predict, or restrict time. In a book titled: Architecture Depends, architect and educator Jeremy Till writes: Time is the medium that most clearly upsets any motions of static idealized perfection in architecture.[endnoteRef:98] Contemporary architectural theory seeks to reconcile this incongruity in finding authenticity in its practice of design towards meaningful building. [98: Till, Architecture Depends, 66.]

But there is a flaw embedded in the philosophical basis of this well-intended approachthat is the all-or-nothing condition of the notion of authenticity.[endnoteRef:99] Adapting an anti-aesthetic stance in its theory, contemporary architecture tries to overcome the dirt, the insignificant, the trivial, and the confused,[endnoteRef:100] banal yet vital acts of the mortal realm. In doing so, it risks falling into a radical inwardness, where tectonic exercises become the primary principle of autonomy of architecture and correct making of buildings alone is (believed to be) sufficient as cultural activity.[endnoteRef:101][footnoteRef:25] This is largely due to attempts at defining authenticity in action, rather than accepting the fact that action, and the act of dwelling as its most human form, find authenticity in ambiguity, and demand contingency within their definition. [99: Till, Architecture Depends, 131.] [100: Jeremy Till, Architecture Depends. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009), 65.] [101: Till, Architecture Depends, 132.] [25: As Heidegger explains Only if the inquiry of philosophical research is itself seized upon in an existentiell manner as a possibility of the Being of each existing Dasein, does it become at all possible to disclose the existentiality of existence and to undertake an adequately founded onto logical problematic. But with this, the ontical priority of the question of being has also become plain. Dasein's ontico-ontological priority was seen quite early, though Dasein itself was not grasped in its genuine ontological structure.(34)]

Till describes the truly authentic approach to architectural design with respect to this very human duality as [inauthentic] phenomenology. He states:Being an inauthentic phenomenologist means being ordinary. (It means to understand) space in all its lived senses, engaging in it as sensitive bodily beings alert to touch, to light, to scale, to smell, to softness, to heavinessto all those aspects that exceed objective measure. (From this) a new kind of space emerges. It is by implication a space that is softer than what it has replaced, in so far as it is not founded on the principles of abstraction, normalization, and order that underpin hard space.[endnoteRef:102] [102: Till, Architecture Depends, 132-133.]

Thus the distinction of means and end inherent to the mortal realm of dwelling, flourishes once modern theory transcends its primary concern with finding meaning for its material previsions of mortal sustenance towards providing a sustainable environment for the act of dwelling. And in doing so, it succeeds in reconciling the duality between the objective and subjectiv