Architecture and nature at the end of the 20th century: Towards a dialogical approach for sustainable design in architecture

Abstract

This essay approaches architecture from a humanist point of view, analyzing social dialogue in relation to design processes and architectural production, which search for a balanced interaction between the built environment and its natural and cultural settings. In a first approach architecture is considered as a 'second nature', one that is fit to meet man's needs, which goes beyond functional and pragmatic issues, and include in a fundamental way the spiritual aspects, those which ultimately define our human nature. In a second phase a historical-interpretative analysis is developed for a better understanding of the main practices in sustainable architecture over the last two decades of the 20th century. The concepts of dialogism and the hermeneutic trilogy (pre-figuration, con-figuration and re-figuration) developed by M. Bajtin and Paul Ricoeur, respectively, are explored as a methodological structure to analyze and interpret a sustainable architecture. The idea is to bind dialogism and sustainability as one concept, in order to approach architecture in an integral and holistic way, and to try to visualize it as a multidimensional cultural phenomenon. Here, the main hypothesis is explained, one which establishes that both, biophysical and tangible factors, as well as social and intangible ones, are indispensable cultural parameters to consider when designing a truly sustainable architecture.