ABSTRACT
The phenomenological approach to architecture adopts Gaston Bachelard's idea in order to undo the wrongs of modernism, and sometimes to argue that modernists were closet phenomenologists. The Darmstadt conference, which included a photographic exhibition of twentieth century modernist architecture, was convened to explore the ongoing problems of post-war reconstruction, but given the title of Man and Space it attracted a wide academic audience as well as professional architects and planners. An important figure was Hans-Georg Gadamer, a former student of Heidegger. The concept of representation that he presented in Truth and Method made things much easier for the architect. Norberg-Schulz combined this with a literal Heideggerian approach to argue that architecture should reconnect people with the fourfold' through the techniques of visualization', symbolization' and gathering'. The architectural adoption of phenomenology emerges from the belief that an overly rational view of the world is a view that celebrates technology and utility diminishes human experience.
