argues that, from a Heideggerean point of view, man “dwells” if he experiences his
existence as meaningful. This experience of meaning is made possible when the ar-
chitectonic design of a place offers the opportunity for orientation and identification.
This means that the built space must be organized in such a way that concrete places
are created, places that are characterized by a specific genius loci. The task of archi-
tecture consists in making this genius locivisible (figure 1). Norberg-Schulz distin-
guishes four modes of dwelling: natural dwelling (the way in which the settlement
embeds itself in the landscape), collective dwelling (embodied in urban space), pub-
lic dwelling (as seen in public buildings and institutions), and finally private dwelling
(living in a house). These different ways of dwelling are connected to each other
through a play of spatial relationships (center, path, domain). What is remarkable is
that this line of thought answers fully to the humanist conception of dwelling as be-
ing surrounded by ever-widening concentric circles (the house, the street, the village,
the region, the nation). This idea refers to life in the warm seclusion of a traditional
community, but is much less applicable to the functional networks and relationships
that determine life in a modern society.
The illustrations that Norberg-Schulz uses to make this train of thought clear
are certainly eloquent, however. He has a preference for images from Mediterranean
and classical tradition, and he emphatically contrasts these images of “figurative” ar-
chitecture with the “non-figurative” quality of functionalism that is based on an ab-
stract idea of space instead of concrete places. It is in this concrete, place-bound
dwelling that Norberg-Schulz sees man returning home: “When dwelling is accom-
plished, our wish for belonging and participation is fulfilled.”^28
The categories that confer meaning on dwelling here refer to fullness, be-
longing, rootedness, organic solidarity between man and place and between man
and man. A figurative architecture can embody all of this. Norberg-Schulz apparently
is convinced that the homelessness that Heidegger talks about is only of temporary
nature, and that functionalist architecture bears part of the responsibility for this. If
architects would only turn their backs on this pernicious abstraction, then the possi-
bility of authentic dwelling would again be realized: “A work of architecture... helps
man to dwell poetically. Man dwells poetically when he is able to ‘listen’ to the say-
ing of things, and when he is capable of setting what he apprehends into work by
means of the language of architecture.”^29 For Norberg-Schulz, then, “homeless-
ness” is not so much a fundamental condition of contemporary man but rather an in-
cidental loss that can be redressed by a better understanding of the relation between
architecture and dwelling.
Massimo Cacciari understands this issue totally differently. For him, it is in-
conceivable that one would be able to put “Building, Dwelling, Thinking” into prac-
tice in such an instrumental way so as to construct a new language of architecture.
While Norberg-Schulz thinks that Heidegger’s “aim was not to offer any explanation,
but to help man to get back to authentic dwelling,”^30 Cacciari argues that the essay
1
Architecture Facing Modernity