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BERKELEY
PRIZE COMPETITION ESSAY
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| PARTICIPANT |
Mr
Phillip A. Stejskal |
| COUNTRY |
Australia |
| UNIVERISTY |
, The University of Western Australia
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| DEPARTMENT |
School of Architecture |
| MAJOR
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Architecture
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| YEAR
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5
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ESSAY
We are 'Strangers in our land, strangers in our city . . .' (Sola-Morales Rubio, 1996). Our contemporary existence is pervaded by a deep sense of groundlessness. Notions such as democracy, progress, logic, and reason resound with but a hollow clang. Beauty is relative. Truth apparently also. We have conceded to Nietzsche1s view of the world as but the 'sum of radically different but interrelated forces and activitiesS[a]Schaotic and contradictory diversity' (Houlgate, 1986). In this climate it has become altogether problematic to legitimise the architectural project according to holistic systems as these have proved increasingly inadequate in coming to terms with the complexities of modern experience. Instead, we are faced with an obligation to produce architecture that situates itself within this plurality. It is simultaneously an obligation to avoid the pessimistic resignation of Massimo Cacciari and the nostalgic viewpoint held by Christian Norberg-Schulz, and to propose an architecture that, while honest, does not fail to acknowledge the fact of human inhabitation. In Architecture and Modernity: A Critique (1999), Hilde Heynen defines the need to go beyond the views held by Norberg-Schulz and Cacciari. Their respective understandings of contemporary groundlessness as (1) temporary aberration, a |
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SOURCES
D. Antiseri, 'The Weak Thought and its Strength' 1996
P. DeRossi, 'Project and legitimation II' Lotus 48-49, 1986
G.Hartoonian, 'Modernity and its Other: A Post-Script to Contsmporary Architecture' 1997
H.Heynen, 'Architecture and modernity, A Critique' 1999
S.Houlgate, ' Hegel, Nietzsche and the Criticism of metaphysics' 1986
J.Rajchman, 'Constructions' 1998
I.de Sola-Morales Rubio, 'Differences: Topographies of Contemporary Architecture' 1997
I de Sola-Morales Rubio, 'Terrain Vague', in 'Kerb: Journal of Landscape Architecture', 1996
G.Vattimo, 'Project and Legitimization I', Lotus 48-49, 1986
G.Vattimo, 'The End of Modernity: Nihilism and Hermeneutics in Post-Modern Culture' 1988
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