Architecture is a way of making that enables man to present his world. This making allows him to find his relationship to architecture and himself. The history of architecture is a part of the history of man and demands our attention if we are to make a contribution to the life of man. Nietzsche states that history is necessary above all to the man of action...who needs examples, teachers, and comforters he cannot find among his contemporaries.¹ “We would serve history only so far as it serves life.”² He also feels that the imitation of the past will only lead to a stagnant and degenerate life. There is a contradiction between these statements concerning imitation. In philosophy imitation has been defined as having two forms positive and negative. Negative imitation would be making an image of an original that reveals all that is immanent in the original. The act is redundant and therefore unnecessary. Positive imitation involves an understanding of things or ideas inherent in the original and lets us present our understanding which may expand beyond the original or lead to a new shift in the original paradigm. We must observe the history of man’s making and gather things that inform us about the world of architecture. History becomes a tool to facilitate architecture. We gather that which for us carries some essential meaning.³ This meaning may be manifested in our understanding of types, elements, or conditions of a particular culture as well as a personal desire to understand them in relationship to ourselves. For example, the elements and conditions that compose the house in some African tribes are considered as metaphors to parts of the human body i.e. door as mouth, window as eye, etcetera. When a family member loses a body part the corresponding element is removed or altered. Throughout history typologies have contained the models and archetypes of man’s ideas and ways of thinking, which are revealed through making. These remain with us and contain elements and conditions that change depending upon our focus. In the scale of the city there exists other types such as houses, churches, and libraries that become elemental when discussing the city as a whole. The conditions occur when analyzing the relationship of the elements with each other and the results that their organization produce. If we translate the scale to building types the wall, column, and stair become the elements and conditions become the mediation between these elements. Desire urges memory and imagination in our making of a re-presentation of that desire and a transformation of our observation. Imagination transforms our observation of what we find essential in history. We understand our relationship to things when we make them and through the revealing of things we come to understand ourselves. Memory recalls things or events that carry some meaning to us, but it also contains the more complete knowledge of things that we may come to know through making. Art is the imaginative appropriation of the essential strivings of historical man.⁴ The actuation of the idea is through the made object. We do this by painting, drawing, sculpture, and poetry. The object is two fold. It contains within it the idea of the reality of the thing and the drawing itself as a thing. An idea of a thing contains some elements common to all the other realities of the thing which makes them thinkable.⁵ When we speak of these things we bring to them some of its history that is known to us. Making allows us to re-present a thing which best actuates our idea and understanding of the thing, and enables us to redefine our world. 1 Nietzche, Friedrich Use and Abuse of History, The p. 12 2 Ibid., p. 3 3 Desmond, William Art and the Absolute: A Study of Hegel’s Aesthetics p. 61 4 Ibid., p. 61 5 Aristotle On the Soul. bk. 1, ch. 4 / Master of Architecture

It is the intention of this thesis to present not only a visual exploration of a design problem, but also to discuss the obviously dialectic relation of the two for me essential basic elements of architecture: type and topos. My architecture education has been shaped in different countries, through different educational systems, and with different teachers and students. This thesis stands as a record of my accumulated experiences and as a description of a personal approach to working with architectural problems. I believe the most important part of an architecture education is the development of one’s own design process. This exposition represents a beginning, / Master of Architecture

A house for a stage for the event of poetic impulse. An architecture founded on the understanding of the fragment and the definition of place of being. A building of the acknowledgement of the rituals of man. / Master of Architecture

Two architects Questions of interaction Questions of decisionmaking Questions of connection “Flickstelle” For an architectural translation see Volume I and Volume II / Master of Architecture

Master of Architecture

When a child, certain skies sharpened my vision: all their characters were reflected in my face. The Phenomena were roused. —At present, the eternal inflection of moments and the infinity of mathematics drives me through this world where I meet with every civil honor, respected by strange children and prodigious affections. —I dream of a War of right and of might, of unlooked-for logic. It is as simple as a musical phrase. (War by Arthur Rimbaud) / Master of Architecture

Convictions are beliefs developed over time through careful consideration forming a base for one’s life work. Manifestations are applied beliefs forming products of the creative spirit. / Master of Architecture

Each and every material has certain inherent characteristics. When successfully evaluated for these characteristics a material’s true spirit becomes clear. Only when a material is completely understood can it be used properly. It is through the sensitive use of materials that architecture becomes rich. When considering materials, several issues come to bear. What "work" do they do? How do the materials interact most harmoniously? How do the materials touch? Do they need an intermediate material? How do they begin? End? To what level are their details taken? A whole world of consideration becomes apparent. The answers to these questions become an operational language through which design can occur. This language when applied to the built environment then becomes a structural language. / Master of Architecture

Two architects Questions of interaction Questions of decisionmaking Questions of connection “Flickstelle” For an architectural translation see Volume I and Volume II / Master of Architecture

Every architect’s work is a set of conditions which, through various relations, may add frequently does have a significant influence on all who participate in the built environment. At the same time, both architects and their work are constantly exposed to various changing relations. When one considers the network of those mutual influences of which an architect and his environment are elements, “form” may be seen as the positioning of an object within a network of conditions and their relations. This network includes visual characteristics of an object, imposed by the architect, and those independent of him, which are culturally conditioned. Such a network constitutes what is understood by “form” in this project. Among visual relations, I have chosen to recognize for example rhythm, contrast, balance, proportions and transparency. The culturally implied (given) relations are, for example, ownership, use, tradition, fashion. All these relations, imposed by an architect and implied by a culture, reveal only a small fraction of this relational network, of which I have consciously chosen to consider only a few. Within this framework, the term “function” would describe a momentary suspension of the dynamics of the network of relations. It is called momentary because all of the elements are in contrast change. Consequently, so are their relations with other elements and, therefore, the overall aspect of the form. Function allows the “freezing” of the network in order to make the observation and critique of the object possible. Such observation can be performed only within certain imposed boundaries, since the entire framework, and consequently, both form and function, are limitless in their nature. Those boundaries reveal certain aspects of the object which are constituted from groups of considerations, which in this project are called “conditions”. Some of the “conditions” are later mentioned in the book a plan, elevation, shape. Since all of them resemble each other in their tendency towards balance, different parts of the project perform in a similar way. / Master of Architecture