The Text as Considered
Author | Bailey Json
​
I. Introduction​
​
“What we are now exposing is addressed to those who shall wish to read it.” (Derrida 9)
What does text mean in the context of architecture that espouses to be about buildings? Is architecture really about buildings or are buildings the text in question? What does architecture mean in the context of buildings? Are architects constructing text in order to make buildings or are architects constructing text in order to call themselves architects? Do architects want to produce text instead of buildings? What I would attempt in this essay is to show that architecture, as currently constituted within the academy comprises the totality of architecture as an art form.
Within this essay, I will begin by situating my argument regarding ‘text’ in terms of Derrida’s différance. I will begin with the term différance as a means to understand how architects and architectures are constructed in the form of an ideal. When speaking of forms or ideals architects are often at a loss to articulate the basis for judgments put forward. I would like hereafter to use arguments based on the writings of Hegel and Kant to illustrate how one can come to understand aesthetics, judgment, ideas, concepts and the imagination whether physical or metaphysical.
To begin, I will explain the reason for the title of this work “Correspondences: The Absence of Différance.” The notion of correspondences in this context is derived from the work of Charles Baudelaire, regarding the sign and signified. Baudelaire used a style of writing poetry to describe particular sensory relationships or synesthesia. Baudelaire’s conceptual synesthesia or blurring of the senses was a tool used to create an imaginary sensory response by way of the text. Through the use of this conceptual correspondence, I will attempt to expose architecture as a ‘text’ that idealizes imagine spatial environments that engage the senses through the use of materials. Contemporary figures such as Steven Holl, Juhani Pallasmaa, Peter Zumthor, and Herzog de Meuron are architects that are creating text that imagines synesthesia through a hyper-simulative environment.
Subsequent to establishing a language for understanding I will pose an argument that will question the nature of ideas as they relate to buildings. Within this section, I will interrogate that which is an idea or a building in regards to buildings or architectures. Though the use of Bötticher’s language of art form/ core form I will argue that buildings are the production of ideas and that this production is not relevant to an architecture of ideas. To make this argument, I will assume the position that architecture is an idea based and not building based discipline. If I am to assume this position, then I will be asserting that buildings are simply re-representations of ideas and not the idea in and of themselves.
The final section of the essay will explore contemporary architecture through the notions of freedom, play, free play, or a combination of the three. These notions are derived from thoughts of Friedrich Schiller and GWF Hegel and Emmanuel Kant. Each of these figures understood beauty as a distinct property of objects. The object’s property that will be used will be understood as both phenomenal and noumenal. While architects such as Holl, Pallasmaa, and Zumthor create objects through a sensory-based imaginary, others’, namely Rem Koolhaas, Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Coop Himmelblau, and Santiago Calatrava, imagined text is based on Schiller’s “conceptual freedom” or constructed idealism that is the foundation of design studios within the academy.
I. Différance
“Whatever might be called the meaning or identity of difference, therefore, exists only within writing, which is to say also that it exists only as writing. (So much for the undeniably powerful idea that writing comes after a speech, as a ‘secondary’ system of ‘representation’: see speech-writing opposition.) From this, it can be seen that the so-called meaning or identity of difference ‘is’ its difference from difference, or at least that this is one form of that meaning or identity.” (Lucy 25)
Architecture, as the art of building text, is a system of writing poetry. Architecture is recognized through material objects that are singular, in that they are re-representations of ideas. I intend to reveal the presence of architecture, as constituted, within the academy and by various practitioners. In order to reveal the absence of architecture, I will deploy an argument based upon the term ‘différance’ as constructed by Jacques Derrida. Derrida’s term différance as a means to access the conceptual spacing of means assigned within a given social structure.
What does it mean to ‘defer’ or to ‘differ’ in the context of architecture? To begin we must understand what différance means within the context of architecture. I posit that architecture, as a State-sponsored ideal, conceals a binary split. The dichotomous relationship provides a known via the identity of the profession of architect. The profession of architect is situated in opposition to the unknown academic architect. I contend that the professional architect is known because the state sanctions the existence of practice through institutions organized to produce, to regulate and to survey the citizenry of the professional practice. If the split of practice vs. the academy exists then it exists on the grounds that practice is different from the academy. I would contend that the play of difference between the academy and practice are merely time contingent traces with the origin of practice being a trace through the academy.
Différance “Or as Derrida puts it in a well-known statement, différance refers to ‘the systematic play of differences, of traces of differences, of spacing by means of which elements are related to each other.’” (Lucy 26)
Derrida offers an understanding of the traces of meanings that is both physical and metaphysical by way of the paradoxical différance. The use of Derrida’s impossible différance can assist in our understanding of the academy as the source or origin of architects and ideas. If the academy were the location of the production of architects, then it would also be the site where architectural ideas originate. I say that ideas originate at the site of production of the architect. This is the location where one locates oneself as the signified or identifiable architect. In order to be recognized as an architect, one must recognize one’s work as architecture. When one completes a course of study in the academy, one graduates into the realm of professionals and is recognized as an unlicensed architect. With or without licensure, one is recognized as a member once the study is complete. Individuals can practice architecture without the license indefinitely. If this is an accurate understanding of architecture, then the academy produces architects along with the ideas that allow architects to be recognized. Architects are recognized through the ideas they produce in the academy because that is what is produced in the academy. So, if the charge of the academy is to produce architects and architects imagine ideas then what is a building? Is a building an idea or is an idea a building?
When does one become an Architect? This question presupposes the existence of systems and symbolic language that prescribe assignments. I would allege that the systems in question impose assignments because the ones being assigned the value are active. Just as architects engage in the practice of Architecture, students engage in the practice of becoming architects through the actualization of ideas.
The subversive nature of the academy uses technologies of bio-power to recruit, rear, program, and sanction architecture to legitimize the identity of its members. This manner of production is similar to the manner in which the female body is recruited, reared, programmed, and sanctioned as feminine within the citizenry. The female body is granted privilege as such, only in that the subject accepts the cultural customs and traditions that signify the feminine. If a being of such distinction elects not to engage in the normative practices, then the being will be marginalized. If the construction of the female figure and the student architect were similar, both would be a subordinate position. The student architect exists within the space of difference because the student differs not only to the academic architect or professor but differs, as well defers, to the professional architect. Within this arrangement, the student is both different and deferred. This arrangement of architectural actor produces the absence of the student architect within a space and time moment that is surveyed by the state. The identity of student architects is secured only through legislation but remains unnatural and unstable. The instability, of the figures, rest within the paradigm of the cursive/recursive split as framed by Barbara Johnson, in the “Feminist Difference” (Johnson18-19). The dependency of the recursive subjects, i.e. student architect or female, can only exist within social systems designed to maintain them in form. The unnatural occurrence of the dependency only serves to continually illuminate the limitations of the social rank.
Then the question of the architect is still unproven. If the charge of the academy is the production of architects and the architect assumes an identifiable existence based upon the ideas produced in the academy, then when does one become an architect? Once one enters an architecture studio in the academy, then one engages the practice of idea production; therefore, one becomes an architect the moment one produces any idea within the academy. The practice of architecture as sanctioned by the State would seem to have a vested interest in concealing this seemingly knowable construct. This is not a knowable reality because the practice of architecture is not based upon ideas. The practice is sanctioned by the State in order to survey the built environment through the implementation of techniques of bio-power (Foucault). The State regulates the academy via sponsoring agencies such as NCARB, IDP, ACSA and the AIA. These bodies have been created to control the hierarchy of the citizenry of architecture in order to reproduce the State, not the practice of architecture.
“The relation of the finite individual to the whole state in which he/she lives was investigated in Bosanquet's Philosophical Theory of the State (London, 1899). In this book, he "…argued that the state is the real individual and that individual persons are unreal by comparison with it. “(Bosanquet)
The State is interested in the State, not the state of the practice or the academy; therefore, the State grants the privilege of being an architect to the members that produce the State. What does it mean to produce the State via an architect? I would posit here that it means that the practice of building products is a technique of bio-power used to organize, craft, and maintain the dominant stated sponsored ideology. If the practice of architecture is predicated on the production of buildings and sanctioned by the State apparatus, then the charge of the practice is to produce the State. I restate the question, what is a building and is a building an idea or is an idea a building?
​
II. Judgment
​
The primary argument within this text is the recognition of architecture as forms of ideas, not objects. To this end, I will attempt to frame a way of thinking about ‘free harmony’. The use of the combined terms art and form will be used relative to the terms core and form.
Perhaps now is a good time to establish, that which is ideal? From this point on I will use the term idea as constructed by Emmanuel Kant to mean “reflective judgment that predicates of a manifold or multiform that cannot be grounded in experience. Kant argues in the “Critique of Judgment” that ‘Ideas’ are differentiated by the possibility of experience. For Kant, an idea is a reflective judgment while a concept is a determinant judgment. (Rogerson 7-8)
Through the use of the Kantian construct of free harmony, we can begin to understand what constitutes an idea in the context of architecture. What we can learn from Kant’s critique is that judgment is an organizing mechanism that allows us to understand concepts and ideas. As understood by Kant, concepts and ideas are bound to the imagination, which is stated to mean sense particulars or phenomena or noumenal. Within this framework, these particulars can mean that which is mental or physical. Concepts and ideas are bound to the imagination in that they are the schemas of how perceptions are to be understood. Ideas as bound but not knowable through some known cognitive schema. The unknowability of particular ideas is due to how Kant relates concepts and ideas to a purpose and/ or end through which concepts are readily decipherable while ideas are based on future potentialities.
If a judgment is based on the imagination and how the imagination is organized and identified as concepts or ideas then we have the semblance of a framework from which to understand ideas, buildings or buildings as ideas. The basis for understanding ideas in the context Kantian language coupled with the art form/ core form dichotomy as constructed should allow for a thorough reading of what constitutes architecture and the architect.
“At the same time, he insisted that one must always try to distinguish and express the difference between the constructional form and its enrichment, irrespective of whether this last manifests itself as cladding or ornament. He wrote that the art for “is only a covering and a symbolic attribute of the part – decoration…” (Frampton 139)
The art form is a parcel of the material essence of the construct to which I state along with this reading the art form is the ‘ideal’ recognized as noumenal. If symbolic or art form is recognizable as a meaning structure, then it can be readily understood as symbolic meaning not symbolic form via materials. This reading of art form allows for the reality of buildings as an art form and building form. While using terminology to negotiate buildings within the realm of ideas, I assume the position herein that buildings occupy the space of core form or that which is bound to the realm represented by the necessities of buildings, while the art-form is the literal form of the built object (Bötticher 138-52). Bötticher uses a simple binary recognizing difference establish the grounds for the art form/ core form split in which he grants privileged status to the core-form where art-form is merely cladding. I assert that Bötticher is privileging the practice of building buildings, not the core-form. Bötticher recognizes the symbolic significance of architecture; therefore, he realizes that which is beyond the physical being of architecture. What Bötticher does through his text is to reinforce the state-sponsored notion that buildings are an architecture which is in différance to ideas.
Though Bötticher was heavily influenced by philosophy his preoccupation with styles of architecture may have rendered him shortsighted to the potential of his argument regarding what architecture is beyond merely stylistic. The systems of ornament and tradition that subsumed Bötticher’s thoughts are bound to systems of meaning, that I situate as conceptual through my use of Kantian judgment. If Bötticher’s thoughts co-exist within Kant’s system of judgment, then his notions of buildings can be recognized through Kant’s system of ‘harmony’.
Within the established framework, core form situates buildings as objects bound to technique and concepts that are rules for schema; while the art form situates ornament or symbols as deferred content to phenomena or ideas regarding possibilities. From this arrangement, we can now understand buildings as representational objects or the product of ideas. Objects, like buildings, are re-representations or imitations of the idea or symbol. The building can never be the ideal because the ideal exist as an apriori expression through idea production. I assert this because buildings, as assembled in contemporary societies, are indifferent to the ideas of architects who are sanctioned by the state to idealize architects.
Now I have illustrated that buildings are not ideas because ideas are produced by architects who are engaged in the practice of idea production within the academy. Craftsmen and craftswomen that have virtually no comprehension of the ideas that the buildings they craft are intended to re-represent. So what we have revealed is that we are dealing with ideas and the representation of ideas. If this is an accurate depiction, then what is architecture? I have asserted that architecture is idea production but what is this production of? The charge of the academy is the production of architects for practice. The academy is the site of the idea production that has to be that which is the product of the architects within the academy. If architects are recognized through the objects they produce and buildings are not the objects produced by architects in the academy then the drawing, models, writings, and sketches are the schema through which architects ‘ideas’ and ‘concepts’ are recognized. This would appear to be an accurate reading of the identity of architects in that architects only exist through that which they produce in order to legitimate themselves. Architects in the practice of the academy or the profession exist through that which they do which is not to build but to actualize thoughts through a recognizable medium. The medium through which architects represent their thoughts is the document. In the professional practice of architecture, a document is a legal contract between architect and client. Within the academy, no such legality exists but the use of the document exists as a derivative of the list of text to be presented. A list is an unspoken contract between the student and the professor to which the student is held accountable.
What is the student accountable for? The student is held accountable to present one's ideas through the production of drawings, models, writings, sketches or recognized documents. The document represents the concepts and ideas of the architects in the academy, the documents are the architecture, not buildings. “By the work; for to say that the work does credit to the master means that it is the work that first lets the artist emerges as a master of his art. The artist is the origin of the work. The work is the origin of the artist. Neither is without the other.” (Heidegger 17) The document is the architect and the architect is the document. The documents produced are the ‘concept’ or past based on Kant’s conceptual determinate judgment that is Heidegger’s ‘work’. The documents produced are the ‘idea’ or future possibility based on Kant’s conceptual reflective judgment. And the documents produced are the imaginary or sense particular based on Kant’s concept of aesthetic judgment. If the documents of architects are the idea, the concept, and the judgment, then the documents are a measure of time as well as being the text.
“Text -- In the broadest sense a text is something that has been made or constructed (a novel, a movie, a legal document, a book of philosophy, etc.), implying that there are other things in the world (being, justice, truth and so on) which haven’t been made but just are.” (Lucy 143)
Apparently, we do not read which is before us because architecture is not particularly about buildings. One could contend that buildings are architecture, which has been the task of history and many would agree. I would assert that all are mistaken in that architecture as accepted is not architecture and that the ‘texts’ or documents of architects are the medium upon which architecture exist. Architects, like Baudelaire, use text-based correspondences to create an imaginary sensory response. Architects such as Steven Holl, Juhani Pallasmaa, and Peter Zumthor use their judgments of space and material to construct ideas about place and represent these ideas via the text of their choosing. These figures, along with others, imagine spatial-material synaesthesia potentiality based on meaning structures that are known or conceptual to them. Because they cannot imagine beyond that which is known to them at a particular moment they are imagining within both species of Kantian judgment (determinate and reflective judgment).
I have exposed architecture as a ‘text’ that idealizes the natural and the non-natural in order to imagine spatial environments that engage the senses through the use of materials. Now I have illustrated that within the academy ideals are produced while the practice of architecture is not about ideas but the production of the state then what does it mean to be an architect? It means that to be an architect is still an economy that grants cultural capital to those in the State-sponsored position of privilege.
“‘The trace is not only the disappearance of the origin – within the discourse that we sustain and according to the path that we follow it means that the origin did not even disappear, that it was never a constituted except reciprocally by a non-origin, the trace, which thus becomes the origin of the origin’” (Lucy 145)
Since cultural capital is sanctioned through the practice of architecture the origin of architecture is concealed but traceable. The State has a vested interest in concealing the identity of the citizenry. If the identity construct were recognizable and the products through which architects were legitimized then architects would be sculptors, musicians, poets or painters who engender much less prestige or privilege than architects and their buildings.
III. Aesthetics
​
“A form is beautiful, one might say, if it demands no explanation, or if it explains itself without a concept” (Schiller 155)
It is not poetics or music that I seek to define, I would like to establish how architecture, as the practice of idea production can be understood through Hegel’s philosophies locating the totality of ideas. I do not intend herein to posit architecture, as something that produces ‘poetic’ buildings for this is the charge of many of my colleagues within the academy. Instead, I would assert that the art form of architecture is only poetry when architects recognize music as the ideal form of art. Hegel asserts that music achieves ideal form in that it achieves a semblance of freedom. If music is recognized as the epitome of art forms, then why do architects continually speak of a poetics when speaking about architectural objects?
Within this essay, I have use notions of ‘concept’, ‘idea’, ‘imagination’ and ‘freedom’ based on the writings of Kant. These notions allow me to construct a framework through which architecture can be understood as an art form. I would like to open out the framework of judgment in order to better understand architecture as a product or work that is and produces a reality. As asserted by Hegel in his lectures on aesthetics a work of art can only become like a reality of the concept, “Art, in Hegel’s view, involves the concept—reality—Idea schema in several ways. A work of art is itself an Idea, an articulated whole that realizes its concept.” (Hegel XXI) Hegel’s framework situating concepts, realities, and ideas allow for an understanding of architecture as the ‘idea.’ This structure also allows for the concretization of architecture as the text or the building as text.
The reality, as postulated by Hegel, contains both the concept and the idea conflated into that which is the idea, the whole. If this is a legitimate structure for understanding the reality of works of art then we can situate the ‘work’ of the architect as the reality of architecture ideas. Because Hegel locates the reality of the concept as the idea then the drawings, models, writings, and sketches that are the schema are the totality of the idea.
Through the use of Hegel’s notion of ‘totality’ regarding idea art forms, we can begin to understand architecture in the context of music. If we are to speak of a totality of form, then music is the epitome of the arts. Music, unlike other art forms, achieves a liberation or negation of form or matter that no other art form can achieve. By excluding or canceling of space music is the totality of form because in itself it is the work, the concept, and the idea and can only be recognized as Kant’s sense particulars that are not bound to experience but emotion. “The sounds with which music builds its world, on the contrary, rush through our sensory hearing to produce their impressions directly in the depths of the emotional life of the soul.” (Hegel 127)
Poetry is different from music in that it is recognized through the sign of the idea, which is the text of poetry that has an inherent intellectual intuition. Hegel asserts that poetry can express all that is imaginable because it is not limited to the material domain of all other arts except music. What poetry lacks that music does not is the ability to escape the realm of concepts as posited by Kant. Because poetry is recognized as a determinate judgment it is and can only be experienced as the thing for itself.
If music is the epitome of art forms, then an architecture should strive to image that which is beyond poetic for that which is poetic is bound to the material realm. I would assert that architects such as Holl, Pallasmaa, and Zumthor recognize the phenomenal world in order to achieve an imagined poetic. The noumenon world as postulated by Kant perhaps could allow architecture to achieve a semblance of the imaginable. If architecture, as situated, is drawings, models, writings and sketches and these things are about ideas then these things are representations of the imagination. These things are of a priori thought or imagined experience. Architecture as such would eclipse the bounds of the material world in that the ‘text’ as recognized as a posteriori.
​
“The sounds with which music builds its world, on the contrary, rush through our sensory hearing to produce their impressions directly in the depths of the emotional life of the soul.” (Hegel 127)
Architecture can be imaged and represented through many more mediums than those currently recognized as standard. The standardization of architecture has limited the imagination of architects by rendering architecture merely a production language for the State. The State occupies the practice of architecture through legislation designed to control the built environment. Because the state dictates to the academy what its structure must be the academy does not use manifolds of representation that would allow architects to express all that is imaginable.
​
​
IV. Absence of Architecture
​​
“To write is to produce absence of the work (worklessness). Or: writing is the absence of the work as it produces itself through the work and throughout the work. (Blanchot 147)
Is the absence of différance the absence or presence of architecture? As stated if architecture is to be located as an art form and art forms are derived from ideas then the goal of architectural operations must be idea production not the production of ideas. What does it mean to posit something is about ‘idea’ production vs. the production of ‘ideas’? While I would argue that ideas are the products of architects who produce architecture the reality of architects is the production of art objects not building objects, therefore, buildings are not architecture. If architects produce themselves through the work of architecture, then architects produce architecture so what is a building if the ‘text’ of architecture is not a building?
In order to understand the presence or absence of architecture, I will situate the concept of ‘work’ as understood herein within the text as Maurice Blanchot posits in his essay ‘The Absence of the Book’. For Blanchot work is not the only operation that produces but also the product produced. Within the framework, we can begin to understand the beginning—end relationship that for Blanchot is the space of absence. The space of the absence is a measure of the space or process of writing, which is the presence of the absence. For Blanchot, a deployment from a center not the beginning—end relationship is the lack of the origin or the idea. For Blanchot, the one produces a book in the absence of meaning because meaning is constructed beyond the presence of the work as a trace of meanings. The trace as posited by Derrida has emerged as a conceptual absence for Blanchot.
“So that one can say that work hesitates between the book, vehicle of knowledge and fleeting moment of language, and the Book, raised to the Capital Letter, Idea and Absolute of the book – and then between the work as presence and the absence of the work that is constantly escaping and in which time is disturbed.” (Blanchot 148)
In the case of architecture, the trace for the origin leads to the architect as that that imagines as a means to construct one's identity. Through the exercise of drawing, modeling, writings and sketching representations of ideas the architect within the academy creates oneself through the work of architecture. Not only does the architect produce oneself as an identifiable architect but one also creates oneself throughout the work. The work produced also produces the absence or trace of the origin because any work of architecture is a reflective operation. Since the work of architecture is a reflective operation it can only be based on sense particulars or ideas.
The ‘work’ of architecture is to produce ideas. In order to produce ideas architects within the academy frame problems that allow student architects to use reflective and determinate judgment to produce representations of that that is imagined. The student architect crafts and re-crafts drawings, models, writings and sketch in order to produce interpretations of that which is imagined. If this is an accurate depiction of the task of the architect, then the representations and re-representations produce the totality of the idea. In the academy, architects not only produce the totality of architecture but the totality of the self, by imagining the self as the work through which they become one.
In the practice of architecture, architects produce themselves through technical documents that represent the material nature of buildings. The material nature of buildings as legislated by the State is not an art of such therefore architects in practice are not producing ideas they are producing technical drawings, models, writings and sketch. The technical ‘text’ is the production of ideas based on the State as an ideology not the architect as an idea. Architects reproduce the technology of bio-power, which is the technology used to produce them. The practice of architecture defers to the State in order to reify the identity of the architect as recognized.
If the objects of architecture are not buildings, then what are buildings? Buildings are not architecture because they are buildings. The distinction between that which is building and that, which is architecture, has continued to undermine the belief that buildings are architecture. Architects have a difficult time articulating what architecture is because architecture is the architect and architects do not produce buildings. Craftsmen and craftswomen produce buildings that are representations of material and technique. If this is a truer account of the buildings, then buildings are the ‘text’ of craftspeople.
​​
V. Freedom for the thing-in-itself?
​
The final section of this essay I would like to look at contemporary buildings as they relate to Kant and Friedrich Schiller’s ideas of ‘free play’. Through an understanding of the free play, I would like to illustrate how contemporary architects such as Rem Koolhaas, Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Coop Himmelblau, Santiago Calatrava, etc. represent a contemporary building idealism. By situating idealism against realism as understood through modernism I would like to reveal the absence of presence within the practice of architecture when it is about idea production.
To begin I would like to understand that freedom or free play as a thought that a work of art is the objective in nature. Through an understanding of freedom or free play, a work that needs no explanation to qualify its beauty would be reflective in nature.
Within this essay, I have briefly sited practicing architects that use Baudelaire’s conceptual synaesthesia as a tool to imagine architectural possibilities. Architects such as Steven Holl (example 1-2) use ideas regarding materials and light in order to conceptualize potential sensuous engagement of buildings. Holl is an example of an architect that uses the practice as a place to test ideas and concepts in buildings as well as furniture. The office draws, models, writes and sketches in order to produce interpretations of that, which is imagined. Holl’s office is an example of an architectural office producing ideas while engaged in the practice of architecture. This office uses the senses to organize concepts regarding the material world. Just as Baudelaire uses the awareness of olfactory recollection to invoke the imagination of the reader Holl uses physical materials and light to heighten imaginary awareness.
​
​
​
​
Other architects such as Rem Koolhaas (example 3) use different strategies to represent their ideas in buildings. Koolhaas and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture through the use of idealism produce ideas based on objectivism. Objectivism for Koolhaas allows for the determinant ideas to be realized as building objects that are self-determining as defined by Schiller. The buildings of Office for Metropolitan Architecture attempts to represent ideas produced to represent the material nature of buildings. Unlike Holl, OMA attempts to produce ideas that are the end in themselves. The work of OMA is an example of a building that explains itself without a concept; therefore, the work establishes freedom or free play. The work of Holl or OMA reveals architecture as ideas production that can be achieved within the practice of architecture. Additionally, the contrast between the two practices shows that ideas can be realized and represented through buildings.
​
​
​
​
Conclusion
The practice of architecture as a technology of the State is not currently structured to produce ideas and or representation of ideas as architecture. Practices such as Holl or OMA operate as occupants of privileged status, therefore, those practices and few others produce ideas. The existence of offices such as these reveals the absence of ideas, concepts or work. Architecture is recognized through material objects such as the work of Holl, OMA, Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Coop Himmelblau, and Santiago Calatrava Hadid. These firms actualize that which is imagined. If this is accurate, then only offices such as these can produce a building that is a text and a system of writing poetry.
​
​​
​
​
​
Work Cited |
Appelbaum, David. “Derrida’s Ghost: Conjuration.“ New York: State University, 2009. p.9. Print.
Blanchot, Maurice. The Gaze of Orpheus and Other Literary Essays, Translated by Lydia Davis. New York: Station Hill Press, 1981. p.145. Print.
In Paris 1857, Baudelaire wrote "Correspondences", arguably his best-known poem. This work beautifully introduced Baudelaire's theory of *Synaesthesia: the idea that the senses can and should intermingle was enjoying a brief vogue, but its deeper significance was its prioritizing of symbol over symbolized. Inspired by the mystical theory of "Correspondences", a Swedenborgian term referring to the idea that every form in Heaven "corresponds" to a form on Earth, Baudelaire had come to believe that the artist's unique ability to represent truth un-didactically, through symbols and metaphors, was of immense importance.
Lucy, Niall. “A Derrida Dictionary.” Malden: Blackwell, 2004. p. 25. Print.
Johnson, Barbara. 1998. The Feminist Difference: Literature, Psychoanalysis, Race, and Gender. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. p. 18-19. Print.
Rogerson, Kenneth. “The Problem of Free Harmony in Kant’s Aesthetics.” New York City: State University Press, 2008. p. 7-8. Print.
Foucault, Michel. Edited by Jeremy R. Carrette (1999). Religion and culture: Michel Foucault.
Karl Heinrich von Boetticher, see Kenneth Frampton, Boetticher, Semper, and the Tectonic: Core Form and Art Form‘, what in What is Architecture, edited by Andrew Ballantyne (London: Routledge, 2002), pp.138-52. Print.
Cudd, Ann. “Feminist Theory a Philosophical Anthology: Subjects of Sex/ Gender/ Desire.” Malden: Blackwell, 2005. p. 149. Print.
Heidegger, Martin. “Poetry, Language, Though: The Origin of the Work of Art.” New York: HarperCollins, 2001. p. 17. Print.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. “Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics”: London: Penguin, 2004. p. XX. Print.
Taylor, Mark. Deconstruction in Context, “Différance.” Chicago: University of Chicago, 1986. p. 403. Print.
Bosanquet, Bernard. The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 3, "Idealism", New York, 1967. Print.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. “Hegel: On the Arts”: Symrna: Griffon, 2001. p. 127. Print.
In them Schiller argues that Kant's “subjectivist” conception of free play in aesthetic response has to be complemented with an “objectivist” conception of beauty as the appearance of freedom or self-determination in the object: a beautiful form is one that appears to us to be determined not by any forces outside of it but only by itself. For that reason “A form is beautiful, one might say, if it demands no explanation, or if it explains itself without a concept” (“Kallias” letter of 18 February 1793, p. 155)