La esencia fenomenólogica de la arquitectura

Abstract

In this essay, we approach the influence of the existential phenomenology and the occupying space by Martin Heidegger in the work of who is probably the main introducer of phenomenology in architecture theory, Christian Norberg-Schulz. Phenomenology develops in the first decades of XX century, but its influence in architecture came after the Second World War in the context of the revision of functionalism and rationalism of the modern movement. After an exhibition of the existential space conception in Heidegger as the topologic plurality opening Dasein and the quaternity of the earth, heaven, mortals and divine beings who open things, we analyze its architectonic appropriation by Norberg.Schulz. The architect formalizes the existential occupying space as a theory of the place translating the existential plot discovered by Heidegger in a structural topologic grammar and a meaning connoted by the mediation of deep and mystic images of our corporeal incardination in space. Such theory of place defines a space unified by the morphologic and typological resemblance of the constructed things and some essential invariant images entrenched in human beings. As a conclusion, we refer to the lacks of the architect's proposal as the main virtue for adapting the richness of the discoveries of phenomenology in architecture.