The reviewer-translator (sūr-fan) draws on Norberg-Schulz's Architecture: Presence, Language, Place.
Structure of the book: It comprises three parts — Presence / Language / Place. The Presence part contains the chapters Use, Reception, and Performance. The Language part contains Typology, Morphology, and Topology. The Place part contains The Vernacular in Architecture, Style, and Interaction.
Foreword
Since the translation of Space, Time and Architecture this is the first time a book this foundational and complete in the field of architectural theory has been rendered into Persian. Presence, Language, Place is Norberg-Schulz's last book before his death, and is therefore a summing-up and the kernel of what the author had set out across his earlier writings. Although the book's subject is not easy for readers unfamiliar with Norberg-Schulz's work, the very good and fluent translation has made reading it much easier. This study, written in roughly 400 pages, can fill a part of the gap in academic theoretical writing in our language.
Norberg-Schulz is, without doubt, one of the most important figures in architectural theory and history of the post-WWII period. The principal feature of his work is its independence from the passing currents of architecture and its attention to the foundational principles of the discipline. Although Norberg-Schulz's discussions always start from man, they are independent of existentialist philosophies — Merleau-Ponty's, Husserl's, and so on. His studies in this area are so deep that one may say with confidence that Norberg-Schulz is one of the best disseminators of Heidegger's thought. The phenomenological method employed throughout his theoretical studies raises architecture from the level of intellectual curiosities and experiments — so widespread today — to the level of rooted, deep questions of this profession. Although his views have been used thousands of times as reference, by virtue of their complexity, originality, and multidimensionality they continue to leave wide ground for reflection.
The aim of the book
The aim of this book is to bring forth an ontological and phenomenological foundation for architecture. The presence of man in the world and the spatial dimension of his physical and mental activities form the basis of the discussion.
Part I: Presence
The first part of the book, 'Presence', is composed of three chapters. In these three chapters 'man's being-in-the-world' and its meaning are examined under the headings of Use, Reception, and Performance. In each of the three, instead of giving brief, simple definitions, the author follows the historical course of these notions and compares the various philosophical perspectives. Norberg-Schulz means particular things by these terms. By 'use' he intends not its modern, simple sense, but the basic activities of man: arriving, meeting, being-with, and consenting. 'Reception' in his work is not of the scientific kind, but a 'comprehension joined with human participation', in contrast to the partial scientific comprehension that has full sway in today's urban planning and architecture. In his view, architects, like the people, need to grasp the objective nature of phenomena without instruments of measurement. Norberg-Schulz attaches a particular importance to the notion of 'place'; in his view, the loss of 'place' — one of the unintended outcomes of modern architecture — has occurred through the rupture between subject and object and the loss of the unity of the life-world and its perception. He emphasises the category of place — generally absent from current architectural discussion. The third chapter, on 'Performance', is used not in the sense of building-technical questions but in the sense of 'the making of the life-world according to a form of understanding of place'. Better still: 'performance is the climax of bringing back a perceived and understood landscape into the language of architecture'. Norberg-Schulz holds that the realisation of a phenomenological understanding is not limited to buildings or human dwellings, but is also bound up with the linguistic questions used in them, with the question of form, and with visual perception. In his view, architecture in its totality is 'the art of building', and this means the use of a particular set of forms in a technological process.
Part II: Language
In the next three chapters (Part II), the various dimensions of the language of architecture are examined. For this reason three methods of analysis — typology, morphology, and topology — are deployed in the use of the principal elements of 'memory', 'identification', and 'orientation'. The author's aim is to show that, before designing any space, one must ask what the space accepts, and then see how this acceptance comes about. Only in this way is the built space turned into a place and given a human meaning. For this reason, the question of architecture has both a use-dimension and a topological dimension.
Part III: Place
The last part of the book, 'Place', is given to the use of formal language in vernacular and modern architecture. The first chapter of this part is named 'The Vernacular'. In Norberg-Schulz's view, vernacular architecture is the source and cradle of the art of place, and the art of place is an answer to the question of living, or dwelling. Here the relation between vernacular buildings and the structure of the surrounding landscape to which they belong is explained. In the next chapter, 'Style', the rules of European architectural style are studied as the crystallisation of shared human qualities developed across history and adapted to the environmental features of the various regions. Lastly, in a chapter called 'Interaction', modern architecture is analysed as a global expression with 'open' and 'dynamic' qualities. This is a new identity which, although essentially the same, always shows itself in different forms.
Norberg-Schulz's critique of modern architecture
Norberg-Schulz's critique of modern architecture is highly worth attending to. In his view, modern architecture, mistakenly known by superficial labels such as 'form follows function', is in fact an artistic movement; in this period more than ever, painters, musicians, philosophers, and architects have been engaged in different fields of artistic expression. He notes in his introduction the circle of Sigfried Giedion's friends, made up of important artists and men of letters of that time. In his view, the chief aim of modernism was to unify and integrate the various concerns of artistic expression. And like Giedion he holds that the modern phenomenological behaviour took shape from the Baroque period. In his view, today's vernacular distinctions have largely yielded to artistic differences. Modern architecture is to be studied not as a self-contained edifice but as the expression of a complex relationship between man and the environment, which must be reinterpreted every day. In the last chapter of the book we encounter very perceptive and first-hand criticisms of certain controversial works of today's architecture — for example Frank Gehry's Vitra Museum — which themselves are very interesting.
A summing-up
Norberg-Schulz is, on the whole, an advocate of modernism — and, more importantly, of modern thought. While he undertakes to look at man in his totality and so criticises the rupture between subject and object, he gradually treats modern architecture as a kind of utilitarian display attended by a break with place. Presence, Language, Place is a deep and specialised work that can be of use to those interested in deep, foundational study of architectural theory. A book that one can read again and again and that has something fresh to say each time. The questions it raises are all open issues which the reader can interpret afresh.
Architecture: Presence, Language, Place, by Christian Norberg-Schulz, translated by Alireza Seyyed Ahmadian.
