History of Architecture 2 Report by: Dalmacio DLS-College of St. Benilde School of Architecture 2nd Term S.Y. 2015-16 April 2016

1. Understanding
Deconstruction
Arch. Ronald John Dalmacio, uap m_archHD

3. Premise
• Immanuel Kant

5. Immanuel Kant
• Causality
• NOTE: spelled C-A-U-S-A-L-I-T-Y

8. Two mathematical riddles that ‘might’ defy
causality
a.) 1-1+1-1+1-1+….∞ = ?
b.) 1+2+3+4+5+6+7+… ∞ = ?

9. Deconstruction is a critical outlook concerned with the relationship
between text and meaning.

10. Etymology
Derrida's original use of the word "deconstruction" was a translation of
Destruktion, a concept from the work of Martin Heidegger that Derrida
sought to apply to textual reading.
Heidegger's term referred to a process of exploring the categories and
concepts that tradition has imposed on a word, and the history behind
them.
Derrida opted for deconstruction over the literal translation destruction
to suggest precision rather than violence.

11. Basic philosophical concerns
Derrida's concerns flow from a consideration of several issues:
• A desire to contribute to the re-valuation of all western values, built on
the 18th century Kantian critique of reason, and carried forward to the
19th century, in its more radical implications, by Kierkegaard and
Nietzsche.
• An assertion that texts outlive their authors, and become part of a set
of cultural habits equal to, if not surpassing, the importance of
authorial intent.
• A re-valuation of certain classic western dialectics: poetry vs.
philosophy, reason vs. revelation, structure vs. creativity, episteme vs.
techne, etc.

12. Basic philosophical concerns
To this end, Derrida follows a long line of modern philosophers, who look backwards
to Plato and his influence on the western metaphysical tradition.
Like Nietzsche, Derrida suspects Plato of dissimulation in the service of a political
project, namely the education, through critical reflections, of a class of citizens more
strategically positioned to influence the polis. However, like Nietzsche, Derrida is not
satisfied merely with such a political interpretation of Plato, because of the
particular dilemma modern humans find themselves stuck in.
His Platonic reflections are inseparably part of his critique of modernity, hence the
attempt to be something beyond the modern, because of this Nietzschian sense that
the modern has lost its way and become mired in nihilism

13. Deconstructivism attempts to move away from the supposedly
constricting 'rules' of modernism such as "form follows function,"
"purity of form," and "truth to materials.

14. Metaphysics of presence
The concept of the metaphysics of presence is an important
consideration in deconstruction. Deconstructive interpretation holds
that the entire history of Western philosophy with its language and
traditions has emphasized the desire for immediate access to meaning,
and thus built a metaphysics or ontotheology based on privileging
presence over absence.

15. “Fountain”
• Marcel Duchamp, 1917
• voted the most influential
artwork of the 20th century

16. House IV by Peter Eisenman

17. House IV diagrams

18. House IV
Interiors

19. Phenomenology
“Originally means
knowledge of appearance.
For Husserl, it meant
knowledge of appearances
as they present themselves
to human consciousness.
(Klassen, 1994)”

20. Bruder Klaus Field Chapel

21. Goethe

22. “Speak to me you stones!”

23. “Architecture of the past is not
used to sooth us, to entertain us
and make us feel good. It is there
to tap into our deeper emotions,
to move us in ways that common
objects and common images have
not moved us before.”
The Architecture of the City
Aldo Rossi, 1966

24. Philosophy and Architecture:
Phenomenology Hermeneutics
DeconstructionWinand Klassen, 1994
God-centered world
Man-centered world
Nothing-centered world

25. Martin Heidegger
• Das Nischts (The Nothing)
• We forget that all beings are
connected.
• We forget to be free.
• “Geworfenheit” or
Thorwness

26. Metaphysics of presence
In Being and Time (1927), Martin Heidegger argues that the concept of time prevalent in all Western thought
has largely remained unchanged since the definition offered by Aristotle in the Physics.
Heidegger says, "Aristotle's essay on time is the first detailed Interpretation of this phenomenon [time] which
has come down to us. Every subsequent account of time, including Henri Bergson's, has been essentially
determined by it."
Aristotle defined time as "the number of movement in respect of before and after".
By defining time in this way Aristotle privileges what is present-at-hand, namely the "presence" of time.
Heidegger argues in response that "entities are grasped in their Being as 'presence'; this means that they are
understood with regard to a definite mode of time – the 'Present'“.
Central to Heidegger's own philosophical project is the attempt to gain a more authentic understanding of time.
Heidegger considers time to be the unity of three ecstases, the past, the present and the future.

27. Metaphysics of presence
Deconstructive thinkers, like Jacques Derrida, describe their task as the questioning or deconstruction of this
metaphysical tendency in Western philosophy.
Derrida writes, "Without a doubt, Aristotle thinks of time on the basis of ousia as parousia, on the basis of the
now, the point, etc.
And yet an entire reading could be organized that would repeat in Aristotle's text both this limitation and its
opposite.“ This argument is largely based on the earlier work of Heidegger, who in Being and Time claimed that
the theoretical attitude of pure presence is parasitical upon a more originary involvement with the world in
concepts such as the ready-to-hand and being-with. Friedrich Nietzsche is a more distant, but clear, influence as
well.
The presence to which Heidegger refers is both a presence as in a "now" and also a presence as in an eternal
present, as one might associate with God or the "eternal" laws of science. This hypostatized (underlying) belief
in presence is undermined by novel phenomenological ideas, such that presence itself does not subsist, but
comes about primordially through the action of our futural projection, our realization of finitude and the
reception or rejection of the traditions of our time.

28. Modernism
Post-Modernism
Deconstructivism Phenomenology
Critical
Regionalism

29. Critical Regionalism
Kenneth Frampton

31. Critical Regionalism
The difference between criticality in deconstructivism and criticality in
critical regionalism, is that critical regionalism reduces the overall level
of complexity involved and maintains a clearer analysis while attempting
to reconcile modernist architecture with local differences. In effect, this
leads to a modernist "vernacular."
Critical regionalism displays a lack of self-criticism and a utopianism of
place. Deconstructivism, meanwhile, maintains a level of self-criticism,
as well as external criticism and tends towards maintaining a level of
complexity.

32. Criticism to Deconstructivism
Critics of deconstructivism see it as a purely formal exercise with little social significance. Kenneth Frampton
finds it "elitist and detached“.
Nikos Salingaros calls deconstructivism a "viral expression" that invades design thinking in order to build
destroyed forms; while curiously similar to both Derrida's and Philip Johnson's descriptions, this is meant as a
harsh condemnation of the entire movement.
Other criticisms are similar to those of deconstructivist philosophy—that since the act of deconstructivism is not
an empirical process, it can result in whatever an architect wishes, and it thus suffers from a lack of consistency.
Today there is a sense that the philosophical underpinnings of the beginning of the movement have been lost,
and all that is left is the aesthetic of deconstructivism.
Other criticisms reject the premise that architecture is a language capable of being the subject of linguistic
philosophy, or, if it was a language in the past, critics claim it is no longer.
Others question the wisdom and impact on future generations of an architecture that rejects the past and
presents no clear values as replacements and which often pursues strategies that are intentionally aggressive to
human senses.

33. Critical Regionalists thus hold that both modern and post-modern
architecture are "deeply problematic“.

34. Phenomenology-Critical Regionalism
• Church of light by Tadao Ando

36. Church on the water by tadao ando

40. “Slippage”

41. Wexner Center for the Arts by Peter Eisenman

45. Question holds:
What does the future lies ahead of us?

46. Just remember two things
• Western Architecture is an architecture of form. Eastern Architecture
(including Philippines) is an architecture of space.
• Western architects wants to identify everything using scientific
method of designing their forms. Eastern architects on the other hand
uses instincts on designing space, we also call it kutob.