Explanation of the Conceptual Model of the Relationship Between Place and Dwelling in Architecture Based on the Hermeneutic Method of Gadamer and Ricoeur

Subject Areas : Life Space Journal

Hafez Abdolkarimi Komleh ¹ , Hossein Zabihi ² , khosro daneshjoo ³

1 - Ph. D. Student, Department of Architecture, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
2 - Associate Professor, Department of Urban Development, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
3 - Tarbiat Modares University

Received: 2023-08-26 Accepted : 2024-05-22 Published : 2024-02-20

Keywords: Gadamer-Ricoeur Hermeneutics, Experience of Place, Dwelling, Architectural Quality,

Abstract :

Architecture plays a fundamental role in inhabitants' understanding and relationship to the world. The focus of architectural practice on this role has the potential to support the inhabitants' interaction with the larger sociocultural reality. This qualitative research aims to develop a methodology for this relationship with a hermeneutical approach and interpretative objective (studying the comparative literature of philosophy and architecture). Using library studies as the methodology, the research was intended to find foundations and operational steps to order early scattered and incoherent materials. Data were gathered based on library research. ‘Understanding Hermeneutics and Mimesis’ starts with Heidegger’s account of understanding as the fundamental human mode of being. Heidegger’s thinking was very influential in the development of Gadamer’s hermeneutics, and this article therefore situates Gadamer in relation to Heidegger’s hermeneutic ontology. The research then outlines Gadamer’s hermeneutic ontology and Ricoeur’s narrative theory of hermeneutics. It lays out the basis of the theoretical framework and develops the relevant concepts. As Gadamer’s hermeneutics is tied up with ontology – the philosophical study of being in general – his theory of interpretation is all-encompassing. Gadamer’s hermeneutics lends itself to thinking about architecture in relation to human life and the meaning that informs it in a general way. It does not, however, lend itself easily to application to a specific example. To this aim, this article draws on Ricoeur’s narrative theory of hermeneutics, which offers a structure through which we can analyze an individual work in this hermeneutic context. The research uses Ricoeur’s theory of narrative hermeneutics to account for the productive act – the ‘doing’– and its impact on understanding. Then, it explores Gadamer’s ontology in existing architectural theory and the connection Ricoeur made himself between architecture and his narrative hermeneutics. Within architectural theory, hermeneutics is often put forward as an answer to problems within the practice and discipline of architecture. It is put forward, for example, as an answer to the overemphasis of technology in contemporary practice and the objectifying logic this engenders. Hermeneutics is also proposed as a framework through which contemporary architecture can enter a dialogue with its past and negotiate this often ambivalent relationship without falling into conservatism. Ricoeur applied his narrative theory of hermeneutics to architecture in his paper ‘Architecture and Narrativity’. In the paper, Ricoeur draws parallels between narrative as the configuration of time and architecture as the configuration of space. Ricoeur goes so far as to say that there is an entanglement of space and time in architecture. The final step in this research accounts for the development of the hermeneutic model of architecture. This is achieved through building on what Ricoeur refers to as the entanglement of space and time in architecture to provide an account of the built world as a key element of the hermeneutic situation. It does this in relation to Gadamer’s account of the temporal nature of human existence, as well as Ricoeur’s account of the temporal character of human experience. Regarding the temporal nature of human existence, Gadamer puts forward the concept of “effective history”. This article proposes the concept of “effective place” to describe how we are similarly affected by the constructed space in which we exist. This is proposed not simply as a spatial counterpart to Gadamer’s account of the temporal nature of human existence, but as an elaboration of the entanglement of space and time in the built environment. The model further develops the entanglement of the spatial and the temporal in the configuration of architecture, particularly the configuration's relationship to the previously existing structures of meaning and the rethought of these structures in light of that configuration. Ricoeur’s theory adapts well to a holistic temporal account of architecture in terms of the work being conceived in a time and place, then becoming a built reality, and finally, impacting inhabitation. The model developed in this research offers a holistic approach to architecture’s relationship to sociocultural structures of meaning and highlights the importance of the built environment to these structures. It also offers a holistic approach to architecture’s relationship to time, where the acts of building and inhabitation are part of a continuous process of interpretation and reinterpretation. Therefore, architecture must prioritize its connection to life and the human experience.

References:

عبدالکریمی کومله، حافظ و ذبیحی، حسین و دانشجو، خسرو. (۱۴۰۲). تبیین معیارهای مؤثر پدیدارشناسی هرمنوتیکی مکان در فرایند طراحی معماری. کیمیای هنر، ۱۲ (۴۸)، 24-1.
نیک فطرت، مرتضی و ذبیحی، حسین و شاهچراغی، آزاده. (1400). تحلیل کیفی ادراک اتمسفری در تجربه معماری... . فصلنامه جغرافیا و برنامه‌ریزی منطقه‌ای، 11 (4)، 774-752
Abdolkarimi Komleh, Hafez. & Tahoori, nayer. (2021). Explanation of the relationship between human and place in Architecture based on Heidegger’s method of phenomenological hermeneutics. 3rd International Congress on Engineering, Technology & Innovation. Darmstadt, Germany.
Arthos, John. (2011). Where Is Muthos Hiding in Gadamer's Hermeneutics? Or, the Ontological Privilege of Emplotment. In F. J. Mootz III, & G. H. Taylor (Eds.), Gadamer and Ricoeur (pp. 119-141). London & New York: Bloomsbury.
Atkins, Kim. (n.d.). Paul Ricoeur (1913—2005). Retrieved October 20, 2019, from The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP): https://www.iep.utm.edu/ricoeur/
Corner, James. (2014). Three Tyrannies of Contemporary Theory. In J. Corner, & A. Bick Hirsch (Ed.), The Landscape Imagination: Collected Essays of James Corner 1990-2010 (pp. 77-110). New York: Princeton Architectural Press.
Gadamer, Hans-Georg. (1986 (1)). Poetry and Mimesis. In H.-G. Gadamer, & R. Bernasconi (Ed.), The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays (N. Walker, Trans., pp. 116-122). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gadamer, Hans-Georg. (1986 (2)). The Play of Art. In H.-G. Gadamer, & R. Bernasconi (Ed.), The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays (N. Walker, Trans., pp. 123-131). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gadamer, Hans-Georg. (1986 (3)). The Relevance of the Beautiful. In H.-G. Gadamer, & R. Bernasconi (Ed.), The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays (N. Walker, Trans., pp. 1-56). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gadamer, Hans-Georg. (2004). Truth and Method (Second ed.). London&New York: Continuum.
Gadamer, Hans-Georg. & Dottori, Riccardo. (2006). Hans-Georg Gadamer A Century of Philosophy: A Conversation with Riccardo Dottori. (R. Coltman, & S. Koepke, Trans.) London & New York: Continuum.
Harries, Karsten. (1997). The Ethical Function of Architecture. Cambridge, MA & London: MIT Press.
Heidegger, Martin. (1975). Building Dwelling Thinking. In M. Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought (A. Hofsdater, Trans., pp. 143-162). New York: Harper & Row.
Hillier, Bil. A theory of the city as object: or, how spatial laws mediate the social construction of urban space. Urban Des Int 7, #153–179 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.udi.9000082# Kidder, Pual. (2011). Philosophical Hermeneutics and the Ethical Function of Architecture. Contemporary Aesthetics. Retrieved from: https://contempaesthetics.org/newvolume/pages/article.php?articleID=618.
Kidder, Paul. (2013). Gadamer for Architects. London & New York: Routledge.
Leatherbarrow, David. (2009). Architecture Oriented Otherwise. New York: Princeton Architectural Press.
Leatherbarrow, David. (2009). The Craft of Criticism. Journal of Architectural Education, 62(3), 20-21 & 96-99.
Malpas, Jeff. (2018, September 17). Hans-Georg Gadamer. Retrieved from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/gadamer/.
Mootz, Francis. (2011). Gadamer's Rhetorical Conception of Hermeneutics as the Key to Developing a Critical Hermeneutics. In F. J. Mootz, & G. H. Taylor, Gadamer and Ricoeur (pp. 83-103). London & New York: Bloomsbury.
Mootz, Francis, & Taylor, George. (2011). Introduction. In F. J. Mootz III, & G. H. Taylor (Eds.), Gadamer and Ricoeur (pp. 1-11). London & New York: Bloomsbury.
Moran, Dermot. (2013). Intentionality: Some Lessons from the History of the Problem from Brentano to the Present. International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 21(3), 317-358.

Moran, Dermot., & Mooney, Tim. (2002). The Phenomenology Reader. London & New York: Routledge.# Pellauer, David. (2016, June 3). Paul Ricoeur. Retrieved from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ricoeur/.
Pearman, Hugh. (2015, August 13). Fictions and mythologies: how architecture writes itself. Retrieved from Writing on and around architecture: http://hughpearman.com/fictions-and-mythologies-how-architecture-writes- itself/.
Pérez-Gómez, Alberto. (1997, November). Hermeneutics as Architectural Discourse. Cloud- Cuckoo Land-International Journal of Architectural Theory, 2(2). Retrieved from www.cloud-cuckoo.net/openarchive/wolke/eng/Subjects/972/Perez- Gomez/perez-gomez_t.html.
Ramberg, Bjørn Torgrim, & Gjesdal, kristin. (2005, November 9). Hermeneutics. Retrieved from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2014/entries/hermeneutics/.
Rée, Jonathan. (1998). Heidegger: History and Truth in Being and Time. London: Phoenix.
Ricoeur, Paul. (1965). History and Truth. In P. Ricoeur, Objectivity and Subjectivity in History (pp. 21-40). Evanston, Il: Norhtwestern University Press.
Ricoeur, Paul. (1966). The Symbolism of Evil. (E. Buchanan, Trans.) Boston: Beacon Press.
Ricoeur, Paul. (1990). Time and Narrative (Vol. 1). (K. McLaughlin, & D. Pellauer, Trans.) Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.
Ricoeur, Paul. (2016). Architecture and Narrativity. Études Ricœuriennes/Ricœur Studies, 7(2), 31-42.
Simms, Karl. (2006). Paul Ricoeur. London & New York: Routledge.
Snodgrass, Adrian., & Coyne, Richard. (2006). Interpretation in Architecture: Design as a way of Thinking. Abingdon, Oxon & NewYork: Routledge.
URL 1: etoood.com. (2010). Kolumba Museum. Retrieved August 25, 2023, from https://www.etoood.com/NewsShow.aspx?nw=214.
URL 2: archdaily.com. (2015). kiasma museum of art. Retrieved May 31, 2021, from https://www.archdaily.com/search/all?q=kiasma%20museum%20of%20art&page=4.
URL 3: archdaily.com. (2013). Louis Kahn. Retrieved December 23, 2018, from https://www.archdaily.com/search/all?q=Louis%20Kahn.
Vesely, Dalibor. (2004). Architecture in the Age of Divided Representation: The Question of Creativity in the Shadow of Production. London and Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.