Revisting the Transcendental: Design and Material in Architecture

Abstract

Husserl’ s Transcendental Phenomenology provides a fascinating attempt at challenging the scientific and conventional conceptions of what constitutes difference, and as a consequence of difference, categories. Embedded in the Western heritage of architecture are numerous intersubjective agreements on history and theory, yet a lateral comparison of built work and settings over time reveals a seemingly ever evolving, and on occasion revolutionary set of artifacts and ideas. The paper suggests that the media of architecture themselves set into motion a search and never-concluding set of iterations and provisional knowings further complexified and enabled by changing technologies and cultures. The paper reviews shortcomings of Alberti’s theory of proportions, Semper’s architectural materialist theory, and the most recent computer enabled biomorphic strategies.