naturalized architecture is bequeathed to us: we inhabit it, it inhabits us, we think it is
destined for habitation, and it is no longer an object for us at all. But we must recognize
in it an artefact, a construction, a monument. It did not fall from the sky; it is not natural,
even if it informs a specific scheme of relations to physis, the sky, the earth, the human
and the divine. This architecture of architecture has a history; it is historical through and
through. Its heritage inaugurates the intimacy of our economy, the law of our hearth
(oikos), our familial, religious and political oikonomy, all the places of birth and death,
temple, school, stadium, agora, square, sepulchre. It goes right through us [nous transit]
to the point that we forget its very historicity: we take it for nature. It is common sense
itself.
PART EIGHT
The concept of architecture is itself an inhabited constructum, a heritage which
comprehends us even before we could submit it to thought. Certain invariables remain,
constant, through all the mutations of architecture. Impassible, imperturbable, an
axiomatic traverses the whole history of architecture. An axiomatic, that is to say, an
organized ensemble of fundamental and always presupposed evaluations. This hierarchy
has fixed itself in stone; henceforth, it informs the entirety of social space. What are these
invariables? I will distinguish four, the slightly artificial charter of four traits, let us say,
rather, of four points. They translate one and the same postulation: architecture must
have a meaning, it must present it and, through it, signify. The signifying or symbolical
value of this meaning must direct the structure and syntax, the form and function of
architecture. It must direct it from outside, according to a principle (arché), a fundamental
or foundation, a transcendence or finality (telos) whose locations are not themselves
architectural. The anarchitectural topic of this semanticism from which, inevitably, four
points of invariance derive:
- The experience of meaning must be dwelling, the law of oikos, the economy of men or
gods. In its non-representational presence which (as distinct from the other arts) seems
to refer only to itself, the architectural work seems to have been destined for the
presence of men and gods. The arrangement, occupation and investment of locations
must be measured against this economy. Heidegger still alludes to it when he
interprets homelessness (Heimatlösigkeit) as the symptom of onto-theology and, more
precisely, of modern technology. Behind the housing crisis he encourages us to reflect
properly on the real distress, poverty and destitution of dwelling itself (die eigentliche
Not des Wohnens). Mortals must first learn to dwell (sie das Wohnen erst lernen
müssen), listen to what calls them to dwell. This is not a deconstruction, but rather a
call to repeat the very fundamentals of the architecture that we inhabit, that we should
learn again how to inhabit, the origin of its meaning. Of course, if the folies think
through and dislocate this origin, they should not give in either to the jubilation of
modern technology or to the maniacal mastery of its powers. That would be a new turn
in the same metaphysics. Hence the difficulty of what justly—maintenant—arises. - Centred and hierarchized, the architectural organization had to fall in line with the
anamnesis of the origin and the seating of the foundation. Not only from the time of its
foundation on the ground of the earth but also since its juridico-political foundation,
the institution which commemorates the myths of the city, heroes or founding gods.
Rethinking Architecture 308