The Everyday, Building, and Architecture: Reflections on the Ethos and Beauty of Our Built Surroundings

Author: Arto Haapala
Year: 2017 (Cloud-Cuckoo-Land 22/36, Festschrift for Karsten Harries)
Source type: article
Raw file: raw/articles/haapala-2017-everyday-building-architecture.md

Summary

Haapala reflects on the role of buildings in our everyday environment, drawing on Heidegger's notion of everydayness (Alltäglichkeit) and Karsten Harries's account of building vs. architecture. He argues that architecture has a double role — both comfortable (stabilizing the everyday) and uncomfortable (drawing us out of it) — and that its beauty lies both in the silent, reliable routines of the everyday and in the power to "let us take a leave from the everyday." He discusses the "ethical function of architecture" and the distinction between decoration and ornament, and asks what building types (railway stations, department stores, museums) might reoccupy the place of the temple.

Key Claims

• Everydayness and building: everydayness (Alltäglichkeit) is "one of the most fundamental characteristics of human existence"; the everyday is "a positive phenomenal feature," "the background" we grow into. Buildings, as Wohnzeug (tool for living), "disappear in their usefulness" — creating "stability, reliability, and structure in our environment" ("The reliability ... of our world depends to a large extent on the existence of culturally significant objects, of which works of architecture are prime examples").
• Architecture as comfortable and uncomfortable: "like all building, architecture too should make us comfortable, while, like all art, it should make us uncomfortable, fill us with dreams of a better world, of genuine community" (Harries). "Works of architecture refuse to fit into the pregiven context without speaking up."
• The everyday as relational/procedural: the everyday is "a thoroughly relational term" (Highmore); "ordinariness is a process (like habit) where things ... pass from unusual to usual"; aesthetics of the everyday concerns home, commute, workplace, shopping center — not only fine arts.
• The ethical function and ornament vs. decoration: architecture has a "communal role"; "all genuine ornament carries the promise of an integrated way of life ... of genuine community," whereas decoration is "simply an aesthetic surplus." Art for art's sake is not viable.
• The temple's heir: Harries: "architecture will have a future only if the place once occupied by temple and church can in some sense be reoccupied." Haapala considers railway stations and department stores (movement; consumerism) and the recent boom in museums/opera houses as candidates — "ornament having at least the possibility to create a community."
• Against totalitarian trust in the architect: Harries warns that modern architecture's totalitarian affinity means "the answer to the question of dwelling should never be entrusted to one person"; "the rights of the individual must be recognized alongside ... the rights of the community."

Connections

Concepts: Everyday Life · Everyday Architecture · Dwelling · Atmosphere
Authors: Arto Haapala · Martin Heidegger · Karsten Harries
Debates: (modernity-and-dwelling)
Related source notes: Building Dwelling Thinking (Heidegger) · The Big Rethink (Buchanan)

Direct Quotes

"[L]ike all building, architecture too should make us comfortable, while, like all art, it should make us uncomfortable, fill us with dreams of a better world, of genuine community." (Harries, as quoted)

"[I]t is exactly by being a stabilizing factor that architecture makes possible the rhythms of the everyday."

"Architecture has a dual function ... [both] make the everyday possible ... and ... stand up to that context and hold their ground."

"[A]ll genuine ornament carries the promise of an integrated way of life, a promise of full humanity and thus also of genuine community." (Harries, as quoted)

Open Questions

• Can Haapala's "everyday aesthetics" (beauty of routine vs. beauty of leaving-the-everyday) be reconciled with the critical function of architecture, or does the affirmation of stability risk complacency (cf. Felski's "peace with the everyday")?