VIRTUAL: Learning. Life. Work.

Abstract

In their university days, many architects would have run across the essays “Building Dwelling Thinking” and “Poetically, Man Dwells” by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. These essays have united generations of architects around the notion that a work of architecture which does not acknowledge and incorporate notions of place does not meet the highest aims of architecture. The purpose of this paper is to move from Heidegger’s quasi-romantic notions of poetic dwelling to more pointed warnings regarding technological thinking. Though this has been well established in other works by Heidegger and his scholars, this paper relies on works by the philosopher that have remained untranslated until recently and are largely unknown. These include the author’s own translations of Heidegger’s poetry, short commentaries, and the essay “Man’s Dwelling” (Das Wohnen des Menschen). The latter is especially valuable because it serves as a coda to the two previous essays “Building Dwelling Thinking” and “Poetically, Man Dwells.” “Man’s Dwelling” also lends this paper its three orienting principles: unpoetic dwelling, the adulation of science, and the mechanization of man. As an illustrative example, this paper delves into the debates amongst modern architects around two iconic precepts: form follows function, and a house is a machine for living. In an academic and professional era that is centered upon technological tools and methods, and in the burgeoning age of generative AI, the author presents this paper as a continuing caution against the uncritical and unfeeling adoption of technological means in the classroom and professional practice.