Kant for Architects

THINKERS FOR ARCHITECTS

Kant

for

Architects

Diane Morgan

‘Diane Morgan’s study on Immanuel Kant and his relevance to architectural thought and theory is a magnificent, thoughtful and provocative study of Kant’s ideas about building and dwelling, but more importantly, of his notions of cosmopolitics which introduce a global perspective to the idea of building homes and worlds. Indeed, Kant’s “cosmic” and holistic understanding of the world is a necessary underpinning for any theory of sustainability, ecology and the cosmopolitan spirit.’

– Professor Nicole Pohl, Editor of Utopian Studies, UK

‘In this brief and yet eloquent introduction to the evolving relationship between Kant’s critical philosophy and the theory and practice of architecture Diane Morgan demonstrates with critical verve, lucid erudition and a wide range of vivid and luminous examples from both architecture and philosophy how the Vitruvian architectural virtues of integrity, utility and aesthetic delight can apply as much to an account of the dialogue between these two disciplines as to the problems or questions encountered within them.’

– Dr. Charlie Blake, University of West London, UK

This book introduces architects to a philosopher, Immanuel Kant, whose work was constantly informed by a concern for the world as an evolving whole. According to Kant, in this interconnected and dynamic world, humans should act as mutually dependent and responsible subjects. Given his future-oriented and ethico-politically concerned thinking, Kant is a thinker who clearly speaks to architects. This introduction demonstrates how his ideas bear pertinently and creatively upon the world in which we live now and for which we should care thoughtfully.

Kant grounded his enlightened vision of philosophy’s mission using an architectural metaphor: of the modest ‘dwelling house’. Far from constructing speculative ‘castles in the sky’ or vertiginous ‘towers which reach to the heavens’, he tells us that his humble aim is rather to build a ‘secure home for ourselves’, one which appropriately corresponds at once to the limited material resources available on our planet, and to our need for firm and solid principles to live by. This book also explores Kant’s notions of cosmopolitics, which attempts to think politics from a global perspective by taking into account the geographical fact that the earth is a sphere with limited land mass and natural resources. Given the urgent topicality of sustainable development, these Kantian texts are of particular interest for architects today.

Students of architecture, who are necessarily trained in negotiating between theory and practice, gain much from considering Kant, whose critical project also consisted of testing and exploring the viability of ideas, so as to ascertain to what extent, and crucially, how ideas can have a constructive effect on the whole world, and on us as active agents therein.

Diane Morgan is Lecturer in Cultural Studies at the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies, University of Leeds, UK.

Thinkers for Architects

Series Editor: Adam Sharr, Newcastle University, UK

Editorial Board

Jonathan A. Hale, University of Nottingham, UK
Hilde Heynen, KU Leuven, Netherlands
David Leatherbarrow, University of Pennsylvania, USA

Architects have often looked to philosophers and theorists from beyond the discipline for design inspiration or in search of a critical framework for practice. This original series offers quick, clear introductions to key thinkers who have written about architecture and whose work can yield insights for designers.

‘Each unintimidatingly slim book makes sense of the subjects’ complex theories.’

Building Design

‘… a valuable addition to any studio space or computer lab.’

Architectural Record

‘… a creditable attempt to present their subjects in a useful way.’

Architectural Review

Foucault for Architects
Gordana Fontana-Giusti

Virilio for Architects
John Armitage

Goodman for Architects
Remei Capdevila-Werning

Merleau-Ponty for Architects
Jonathan Hale

Lefebvre for Architects
Nathaniel Coleman

Kant for Architects
Diane Morgan

THINKERS FOR ARCHITECTS

Kant
for
Architects

Diane Morgan

First published 2018
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

The right of Diane Morgan to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Morgan, Diane, 1963–author.
Title: Kant for architects / Diane Morgan.
Description: New York : Routledge, 2017. | Series: Thinkers for architects | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017020042 | ISBN 9780415698689 (hb : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780415698696 (pb : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781315719795 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Kant, Immanuel, 1724–1804. | Architecture-Philosophy.
Classification: LCC B2797 .M67 2017 | DDC 193-dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017020042

ISBN: 978-0-415-69868-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-415-69869-6 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-71979-5 (ebk)

Typeset in Frutiger
by Out of House Publishing

To Bernard, a master-builder

Taylor & Francis
Taylor & Francis Group
http://taylorandfrancis.com

Contents

Series editor's preface xi
Illustration credits xiii
Acknowledgements xv

Introduction: why Kant now? 1

Placing Kant: the city of Königsberg/Kaliningrad 12
Kant, the critical project and architecture 24
Does a house necessarily stand? 37
Is a house necessarily solid and fixed? 40
Reaching for the skies: building the tower and multivocality 42
The precarious situation of architecture and its relation to beauty 48
Architecture: too down-to-earth to be beautiful? 50
What does beauty care about? 57
The beautiful, the utopian dream and the ‘real’ world of consumer culture 59
From the sublime to the cosmopolitical 95
Measuring the sublime and its relation to architecture 97
The sublime, nature and an expanded notion of architecture 107

ix CONTENTS

Building cosmopolitically? ‘Fluid geography’ and ‘total thinking’ 113

The cosmic viewpoint and architecture 114
Tension as a constructive force 118

Conclusion: architects of the future unite! 125

Further reading 128
Bibliography 130
Index 138

Series editor’s preface

Adam Sharr

Architects have often looked to thinkers in philosophy and theory for design ideas, or in search of a critical framework for practice. Yet architects and students of architecture can struggle to navigate thinkers’ writings. It can be daunting to approach original texts with little appreciation of their contexts. And existing introductions seldom explore a thinker’s architectural material in any detail. This original series offers clear, quick and accurate introductions to key thinkers who have written about architecture. Each book summarises what a thinker has to offer for architects. It locates their architectural thinking in the body of their work, introduces significant books and essays, helps decode terms and provides quick reference for further reading. If you find philosophical and theoretical writing about architecture difficult, or just don’t know where to begin, this series will be indispensable.

Books in the Thinkers for Architects series come out of architecture. They pursue architectural modes of understanding, aiming to introduce a thinker to an architectural audience. Each thinker has a unique and distinctive ethos, and the structure of each book derives from the character at its focus. The thinkers explored are prodigious writers and any short introduction can only address a fraction of their work. Each author – an architect or an architectural critic – has focused on a selection of a thinker’s writings which they judge most relevant to designers and interpreters of architecture. Inevitably, much will be left out. These books will be the first point of reference, rather than the last word, about a particular thinker for architects. It is hoped that they will encourage you to read further, offering an incentive to delve deeper into the original writings of a particular thinker.

The Thinkers for Architects series has proved highly successful, expanding to fourteen volumes dealing with familiar cultural figures whose writings have

influenced architectural designers, critics and commentators in distinctive and important ways. Books explore the work of: Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari; Martin Heidegger; Luce Irigaray; Homi Bhabha; Pierre Bourdieu; Walter Benjamin; Jacques Derrida; Hans-Georg Gadamer, Michael Foucault, Nelson Goodman, Henri Lefebvre, Paul Virilio, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and now Immanuel Kant. Future volumes are projected, addressing the work of Jacques Lacan and Jean Baudrillard. The series continues to expand, addressing an increasingly rich diversity of thinkers who have something to say to architects.

Adam Sharr is Head of the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape at Newcastle University, Principal of Adam Sharr Architects and Editor-in-Chief of arq: Architectural Research Quarterly, a Cambridge University Press international architecture journal. His books published by Routledge include Heidegger for Architects and Reading Architecture and Culture.

xii SERIES EDITOR'S PREFACE

Illustration credits

Acknowledgements

Heinrich von Kleist, Zusatz vom 30. Dezember 1800 (Project Gutenberg). xvi
Kant, the critical project and architecture
2. Douiret, Tunisia (image author’s own). 38
3. Matmata, Tunisia (image author’s own). 38
4. David Greene (Suit made by Pat Haines based on the Suitaloon project by Michael Webb) © Archigram 1968. Photograph Dennis Crompton. 41
5. Building site of La Fondation Louis Vuitton (image author’s own). 44
6. Building site of La Fondation Louis Vuitton (image author’s own). 45
The precarious situation of architecture and its relation to beauty
7. Exterior view of La Fondation Louis Vuitton, © Fondation Louis Vuitton/Thomas Depin. 60
8. Sauerbruch & Hutton’s Jessop West Building, University of Sheffield 2008, ©h Noshe. 80
9. Caryatids, rue des petites écuries, Paris 10° (image author’s own). 83
10. Santa Maria della Pietà, via Torremuzza, Palermo (image author’s own). 86
11. Francis Solers’ French Ministry of Culture, Paris 2004 (image author’s own). 88
From the sublime to the cosmopolitical
12. Close-up of Egyptian pyramids (Wikimedia Commons). 105
13. Giovanni Paolo Panini’s ‘Interior of St Peter’s in Rome’, 1750 (Wikimedia Commons). 106

xiii ILLUSTRATION CREDITS

Building cosmopolitically? ‘Fluid geography’ and ‘total thinking’
Buckminster Fuller and his students testing their geodesic dome experiment at the Black Mountain College, 1949 © Courtesy, the Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller. 123

Acknowledgements

In March 1801, Kleist encountered Kantian philosophy. The consequences for him were devastating. He erroneously believed that Kant’s putting into question our knowledge about things in themselves meant that all our certitudes become groundless, that all that we have experienced in the world is revealed as having been based on nothing substantial. He described himself as ‘painfully shattered’ by such thoughts. My experience of reading Kant does not resemble Kleist’s. As I hope to demonstrate, for me he is more a thinker who encourages one to try to get a grip on the world, to act as a moral agent within it. To be sure, Kant solicits our assumptions. Nevertheless, he impresses upon us that we have the structural capacity to resist such critique, and indeed even to evolve because of it.

Before what is known as his ‘Kant-crisis’, and evidently before his suicide at the Kleiner Wannsee, Berlin on 21 November 1811, Kleist had rather boastfully proclaimed to his girlfriend, Wilhelmine von Zenge, that he had discovered a resourceful idea about how to resist life’s trials and tribulations. He related to her that he drew his comfort from the study of architectural forms. His story runs as follows:

On the evening before the most important day of my life, I went for a walk in Würzburg. As the sun sank it seemed to me as if my happiness was sinking with it. I shuddered to think that perhaps I must cut myself off from everything that was dear to me. Then, walking back to town deep in thought, I went through a vaulted gateway. ‘Why,’ I wondered, ‘does the vault not cave inwards as it has no support?’ It stands,’ I replied, ‘because all the stones want to collapse at once’ – and out of this thought I drew to me an indescribably reassuring consolation, which has stood by my side even in the most decisive moments, that I, too, would not collapse, even if I lost all courage.

xv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Kleist’s addition to his letters of 16 and 18 November 1800 from 30 December. The vaulted gateway of Würzburg.

I’d like to acknowledge how my friends, as well as Bernard, Joseph and Gladys, in effect hold things in place, even if it feels, and especially when, all is about to collapse. Friendship is indeed as miraculous as a vaulted arch!

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Series Editor Adam Sharr and Trudy Varcianna of Routledge for their friendly professionalism. I was able to complete this publication thanks to research leave granted by the research committee of my School of Fine Art, History of Art & Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds. I also acknowledge the benefit I have gained by being able to share my enthusiasm for Kant’s cosmopolitical utopianism and architecture with our students.

xvi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS