Rethinking Architecture| A reader in cultural theory

Phenomenology; Structuralism; Postmodernism; and Poststructuralism. Although these
categories do not cover all the key movements in twentieth-century Western critical
thought—indeed some areas such as feminism remain sadly under-represented—they
have been adopted as a convenient means of dividing up the available material.
Each section addresses the question of architecture from a different perspective. The
extracts included under modernism, for example, deal largely with the problems of the
sudden onslaught of modernisation. Architecture reflects the social conditions of the new
age. There is at the core of contemporary existence a transcendental homelessness which
Kracauer evokes so lucidly in his description of the hotel lobby, the quintes—sential
space of modernity. These new conditions have engendered a new response in the
modern blasé individual of Georg Simmel’s metropolis, or the flâneur of Walter
Benjamin’s arcades. The response to this new condition can be understood in
psychoanalytic terms, whereby consciousness acts as a buffer against the continual
shocks that constitute the experience of modernity.
The extracts included under phenomenology, meanwhile, address humankind’s
situatedness in the world, and focus on the depthlessness of modern existence.
Phenomenology offers a model to probe below the surface and to enquire about the
fundamental basis of the human condition. It is precisely by exposing the impoverished
mechanisms by which space has been perceived traditionally that the extracts point the
way forward to an approach that seeks to transcend these limitations. Space is never
empty space, but, as Foucault observes, it is always ‘saturated with qualities.’^6 Nor is the
eye of the architect, as Lefebvre reminds us, ever innocent.^7 The world of blueprints
remains a reduced, abstracted world. Once the full ontological potential of space is
understood, architects might begin to incorporate such considerations into their design
processes.
Structuralism, through the study of semiology, offers a further model for
understanding architecture. The semiological approach addresses how architecture can be
read semantically. In so doing it opens up a domain often either not fully appreciated by
architects, or overlooked entirely. Indeed architects have tended to stress the functional
aspects of architecture to the detriment of any semantic dimension. Yet, as Barthes
observes, humankind has the capacity to attach meaning to even the most technological
of artefacts.
The question of how architecture might be understood semantically is further
elaborated by the poststructuralist contributions. Here the emphasis shifts increasingly
away from a discussion of form towards one of content. Indeed in the work of Michel
Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and Paul Virilio, the authority of architectural form is called
into question. Their work serves as a necessary corrective to the often inflated claims
ascribed to architectural form by architects themselves. The primacy of the physical can
be seen to be eroded by new ways of thinking that are themselves engendered by
advances in technology and tools of representation.
Likewise on the question of postmodernism, the premise of the articles selected is that,
far from being a question of mere architectural style, postmodernism is necessarily
related to the conditions of late capitalism. Thus Fredric Jameson attempts to go beyond a
descriptive understanding of architecture that pigeon-holes it according to stylistic
categories, to analyse the conditions that have given rise to it. Architectural forms can be
seen to constitute the epiphenomena of broader underlying social forces. An