ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Colin St John Wilson's architectural writing, much of which was collected and published as Architectural Reflections: Studies in the Philosophy and Practice of Architecture in 1992. It considers of the growth of an ethical line, and its intrinsic connection with the aesthetic, and revisit Wilson's explication of the architectural experience, citing his use of Stokes's ideas and their parallel with D. W. Winnicott's notion of transitional phenomena. The chapter shows that Wilson's written oeuvre demonstrates that it is exactly such 'other' phenomena of life to which architecture is inherently tied, and returns again to Vitruvius' firmitas, utilitas and venustas. Wilson began to ponder 'the major misconstruction that has plagued the discussion of architecture ever since the invention of aesthetics in the Eighteenth Century' that denied the verity of Aristotle's distinction between fine art and practical art, and therefore rejected one of the key canons of classical Greek theory.
