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  • Essay / Phenomenology in Architecture Essay - 911

    Phenomenology is a stream of philosophy that influences modern architecture and a field of research, experimenting with the construction of materials and space in aesthetic aspects. In phenomenology, the environment is determined as “the place”. This place is not like a locality but includes specific elements like shape, color, material and texture, and all these merge to form the atmosphere. Phenomenology takes the idea of ​​subjectivity and makes the situation and its unique conversation with its location the proper subject and not the thing itself. The history of phenomenology in architecture begins in 1970, over the past 30 years, from the writings of Martin Heidegger, a German philosopher, who begins to have significant effects on modern architectural theory. Christian Norberg – Schulz was an important figure for architecture students in the 1980s. He wrote a book: “Genius Loci, towards a phenomenology of architecture”. He explains the phenomenological approach to architecture and read mainly in architecture schools. Architects like Peter Zumthor, Herzog Demeuron and Caruso St. John have been placed under the umbrella banner of phenomenology and much of this approach to design can be traced back to the book by Christian Norberg – Schulz. The philosopher Edmund Hursserl believed that, beneath the changing flow of human consciousness and experience, there exist unchanged structures of consciousness, which the phenomenological method, he believed, could identify. He also says that humans should focus on the experience they have of architecture rather than any lack of perception of architecture. Heidegger followed Hurssel's theory and looked more at experience and gave the example of a hammer. ''When a craftsman hammers the hammer...... middle of paper ......ing belongs to the home and to one as much as the other comes from the workshop of long experience and incessant practice. 5The strictly reduced palette of materials has the same effect as a silent space, and we gain a heightened awareness of the physical presence of the church, a presence onto which we can project meanings. “By paying attention to the raw and existential character of his materials, Lewerentz privileges a subjective and changing experience of the world... By adopting a phenomenological approach, Lewerentz recognizes prayer as an individual and meditative activity. Saint-Pierre is a church of humanism. Paradoxically, the material intensity of Saint-Pierre is almost too much to bear. In this, the church reflects only too faithfully the character of its architect... It is as if Lewerentz forced us to confront ourselves at every moment with the condition of our existence..’’6