ABSTRACT
Few famous philosophers have written specifically for an audience of architects.
Martin Heidegger is one of them. He spoke to a gathering of professionals and
academics at a conference in Darmstadt in 1951. Hans Scharoun – later
architect of the Berlin Philharmonie and German National Library – marked up
his programme with glowing comments, enthusing about Heidegger’s talk to
friends and acquaintances (Blundell-Jones 1995, 136). The discussion, which so
inspired Scharoun, was later printed as an essay called ‘Building Dwelling
Thinking’. Republished to this day and translated into many languages, the text
influenced more than one generation of architects, theorists and historians
during the latter half of the twentieth century. When Peter Zumthor waxes
lyrical about the atmospheric potential of spaces and materials; when Christian
Norberg-Schulz wrote about the spirit of place; when Juhani Pallasmaa writes
about The Eyes of the Skin; when Dalibor Vesely argues about the crisis of
representation; when Karsten Harries claims ethical parameters for architecture;
when Steven Holl discusses phenomena and paints watercolours evoking
architectural experiences; all these establishment figures are responding in some
way to Heidegger and his notions of dwelling and place.
