ABSTRACT
Philosophy teaches us how to think deeply and broadly, and phenomenology grants architects this potentiality. It provides architects with a powerful and reliable ground from which they can establish their unique way of perceiving the built environment and develop their individual ways of thinking. This chapter strives to weave fragments of the thoughts and acts of each of the three protagonists through the philosophical narrative, in order to construct a direct relationship between the intellectual concepts explored, and the processes and architecture of Aalto, Utzon and Fehn. Davies and Krista Sykes identify if not a theoretical vacuum, surely a lack of confidence regarding the intellectual foundations upon which the praxis of contemporary architecture is founded. Plato's contribution encompassed ethical, political, legal, metaphysical and epistemological realms, utilising the vehicles of dialogue, metaphor and dialectic, that provided the foundation of what we now term 'Western thought'.
