Gadamer for Architects

Author: Paul Kidder
Year: 2013
Source type: book
Raw file: raw/books/kidder_2013_gadamer_for_architects.md

Summary

Kidder provides a concise introduction to Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002), focusing on aspects most influential among architects: his philosophy of art (especially "play" in artistic creation), his theory of interpretation (philosophical hermeneutics), and his sensitivity to practical thinking arising from practice. Gadamer's hermeneutics offers profound ways to understand the influence of the past upon the present and to appropriate cultural history in ever-new forms. For architects, Gadamer opens possibilities for understanding how building today can be rich with human meaning, relating to architecture's history without merely repeating or repudiating it. His thought resists reduction of architecture's significance to practical functioning and seeks to recover ideals of rationality broader than empirical and technical reason.

Key Claims

• Gadamer's philosophy of art gives special place to "play" as it occurs in artistic creation
• Philosophical hermeneutics offers profound ways to understand influence of past upon present and appropriate cultural history in ever-new forms
• Gadamer's sensitivity to practical thinking — theory arising from practice — gives his thought remarkable usefulness in everyday professional work
• Hermeneutics holds promise of fundamentally altering how one thinks about interpretation, understanding, and communication of culture
• The hermeneutic circle is cumulatively productive, not vicious: revising sense of whole as one grasps parts, revising sense of parts as meaning of whole emerges
• Gadamer resists narrowing of rationality to natural-scientific method; search for truth is in tension with idea of method
• "As the book is to literacy, so architecture is to culture" (Vesely) — architecture carries profound human meaning
• Four puzzles characterize architectural discussion: functionality vs. meaning, aesthetics vs. structure, symbolic function, and relation to history/tradition
• Gadamer's notion of play integrates artistic activity with other forms of meaning-making, particularly search for truth
• Past has power over us that runs deeper than our abilities to consciously master it; to reject origins totally is to leave ourselves alienated and homeless

Connections

Concepts: hermeneutics, interpretation, play, tradition, history, practical-wisdom, being, truth-and-method, hermeneutic-circle, aesthetic-consciousness, historical-understanding, prejudice, horizon, fusion-of-horizons, effective-historical-consciousness, ontology

Authors: gadamer-hans-georg, kidder-paul, heidegger-martin, husserl-edmund, kant-immanuel, hegel-g-w-f, plato, aristotle, nietzsche-friedrich, habermas-jurgen, derrida-jacques, vesely-dalibor, harries-karsten, perez-gomez-alberto, norberg-schulz-christian, sharr-adam, schleiermacher-friedrich, dilthey-wilhelm, kierkegaard-soren, mugerauer-robert, friedlander-paul, bernasconi-robert

Debates: deconstruction-vs-hermeneutics, tradition-vs-innovation, method-vs-truth, method-vs-truth

Related source notes: , coyne-peirce-for-architects, abell-freud-for-architects

Direct Quotes

"Hermeneutics holds the promise of fundamentally altering the way one thinks about interpretation, understanding, and the communication of culture." (p. 3)

"The search for truth, Gadamer's book title intends to suggest, is in some degree of tension with the idea of method." (p. 5)

"As the book is to literacy, says Vesely, so architecture is to culture." (p. 5)

"The past has a power over us, it is argued, that runs deeper than our abilities to consciously master it, and to reject our origins in a totalizing way is to leave ourselves alienated and homeless." (p. 7)

"Gadamer related to even his most influential mentors through a critical dialogue." (p. 7)

"The question persists as to how the aesthetic dimension can be reintegrated in a fully successful way with the other important qualities of architecture." (p. 6)

"In sometimes surprising ways, Aristotelian thought can help make sense of the collaborative work of today's practitioners." (p. 8)

Open Questions

• How might Gadamer's hermeneutics be applied to collaborative design processes?
• What would "hermeneutically minded" architectural education look like?
• How can architecture relate to its past without merely repeating or repudiating it?
• Can Gadamer's concept of play be operationalized in design pedagogy?