A House Not Made With Hands

A House Not Made With Hands Semantics as Building Material
Author(s): Ben Mullen

Source: Building Material , 2016, No. 20, Building Material (2016), pp. 11-39
Published by: Architectural Association of Ireland
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/26445099
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms
Architectural Association of Ireland is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and

extend access to Building Material
This content downloaded from

152.32.104.240 on Wed, 06 Oct 2021 02:04:50 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
A House Not Made
With Hands Semantics
as Building Material
Ben Mullen
'The first reality is story.'

John Berger1
To begin, an axiom; the double negative 'One cannot not

communicate'.2 It is true. Every behaviour is a form of
communication, every manner an attitude. Language is
existential. One (a self say) is verbal, even in silence. Language,
it seems, is a priori, and if this be so, communication
is ineluctably related to (or dependant upon) reception,
interpretation, legibility. So what is language? Where
and how does it begin or end? Is it possible to measure its
influence on architectural discourse? Specifically, how does
language enable or disable our design work; to produce good
architecture, and what is that?
This essay presents a short study of the possibilities
of language as a resource (or material) for contemporary
building. Investigating the origins of the written word
(via the spatial organisation of the Agora), it explores how
informal language interrogates the formal basis of Classical
and Modern architectures and formulates new possibilities
in contemporary architectural practice.
A House Not Made With Hands Semantics as Building Material 11

152.32.104.240 on Wed, 06 Oct 2021 02:04:50 UTC
There is an idea that the spoken and written word forms
the basic sub-structure of spatial organisation in Western
Civilisation.3 The subliminal structuring power of language
proves not only to be the soft matrix of civic architecture;
town and city planning, but also of a wider thought process,
affecting our collective ability to conceive of forms in spaces
in general.
The chosen sub-title of this essay, Semantics as Building
Material, relates to the method in which meaning (and
not meaning) is transferred or communicated via physical
forms - a sign, a letter, a door - prescribed spaces and other
constructed phenomena. While the various applications
of semantics form the basis of how we deduce meaning in
contemporary cultural discourse, the origins of this process
may not be as epistemologically grounded as one might
suspect. Does the language we use to talk about building
become meta-material with design intent? Its semantic
components influence the places, objects and social
structures we make through our building activities, reflecting
back to us the way we organise and assign meaning to our
thoughts. To what extent then does language determine
what we can imagine?
Newspeak (Thoughts on Crime in 1984)

The dystopian future depicted in Orwell's novel, 1984, depicts
a world of forced civic compliance in an advanced stage of
societal design/decay. Oceania, a fictional, autocratic super
state, has brainwashed its citizens over the course of three
generations and tellingly, the fundamental mechanism of
totalitarian control in this bleak, joyless world is language.
Social discourse has been neutered and regularised by
'Newspeak', a deductive form of English in which undesirable
synonyms and antonyms are obliterated, thereby obliterating
every possible resonance words, and their associative
concepts, may have. Crime for example, as both concept
12 Building Material

152.32.104.240 on Wed, 06 Oct 2021 02:04:50 UTC
and action is effectively circumscribed by the careful
extraction of the word itself, 'crime'. Evidently the removal
of a singular word from a language is the removal of the
entire set of relations eventuated by the concepts the word
represents.
Seamus Heaney addresses this thought in an essay
entitled 'The Government of the Tongue'.4 In this address,
he describes how poetry vindicates itself through its own
'expressive powers'. Vindication is for Heaney the authority
of language as the medium of living. The word forcibly takes
its place among the elements as an agent of instruction,
as a power in nature and in human society.
Building a Clearing in the Trees

How then does a single word or a language influence a
building culture? What light can be shed on how we practice
architecture or how we practice dwelling by studying
linguistics? In his essay, 'Building, Dwelling, Thinking',
Heidegger finds etymological links between the Old English
and High Germanic morpheme baun. Baun alternately
meant 'building' or 'to dwell' respectively. The alternating
homonymic exchange between noun and verb (building;
as noun - dwell; as verb) suggests an unexpected equivalence
between objects (or sites) and activities associated with the
process of building. To live evidently then is to dwell and to
dwell is to build.51 understand this conceptual linguistic loop
as a sort of synthetic phenomenology, where space and time
are commingled through the construction and occupation
of the built edifice. Heidegger's phenomenology is not one
of pure being, but of being through building.
Similarly, Kenneth Frampton located linguistic
development at the threshold of architectural history in his
text, Studies in Tectonic Culture. Architecture, he remarks,
is always operating at 'the limit of language'.6

152.32.104.240 on Wed, 06 Oct 2021 02:04:50 UTC
Some Thoughts on Edges
This limit, outlined by Frampton, is a space of enormous
charge and energy. Like all thresholds, its life is
spent mediating between opposing forces. And like
architectonic spaces, language mediates this opposition
while simultaneously acknowledging their presence.
The development of the written word from c. 2000 B.C
onward, shares in part its history with the development of
architectures evident in the Agora. The process of assigning
physical form to the formless fluidity of articulated speech,
now known as 'true writing', begins a series of formal set
pieces recurring frequently throughout the built environment.
The idea of edge, for example, is the most concise and
eloquent articulation of a form's presence. Edge gives
definition, determines end and beginning as evidenced in
all made spaces; a single room, an entire building, city walls
or garden gates are understood in a manner equivalent to
components of speech and the written word. The history
of spatial organization in Western Civilisation is in part
derivative of written language; its legibility and expression
of order as signifier of meaning. The first civic compounded
space for example, the Agora, displays many of the formal
characteristics and structural qualities of the Alphabet.
The relationship of solid to void, of acute to obtuse angles
as expressed by abstract edges in the spatial arrangement
of buildings in the Agora echoes the relationship of point,
line and enclosure in the characters and phonemes of the
first alphabets. Through their intelligibility, these clearly
defined parameters offer an existential orientation of sorts,
resulting in a sense of social participation and inclusion
through the act of comprehension. Similarly, the spatial
relationship of consonant to vowel within words and
sentences can be read in a manner similar to the reading
of the figure ground relationship of a city. Giambattista
Nolli's Map of Rome for example, presents the city as a

152.32.104.240 on Wed, 06 Oct 2021 02:04:50 UTC
patchwork of solid and void, expressing an interior meaning
and a simple semantics of the edge.
The hard edges of consonantal sounds, however, cannot
be pronounced without first distancing their obstructive
'clacking' qualities (Heaney again) with broad or narrow
vowels. In the same way, a building obviously has no form
without an exterior condition. Consonant in this instance
is described as an obstruction of breath and stands in direct
contrast to the spatial appeasement of the vowel. Observe for

instance the legibility and programmatic clarity produced by
the clear definition of edges in Mies' plan for the Campus of
Illinois Institute of Technology. Here, an entire language (or
the alphabetic components of its structure) is generated by
the relationship of solid to void.
Alberto Perez-Gomez describes the binary movement
between solid and void as a type of spatial becoming, one
whose foundation is rooted in the concept of eros.7 Space,
like language, is a medium in dialectic tension, connecting
and separating simultaneously. In his text Built Upon Love,
Perez-Gomez makes a primary distinction between two
types of erotic space; chora and topos. Chora, he describes,
is human space, programmed via techne, craft and making
combined, producing the poetic. It is unrelated to topos,
which is space without human intervention. He identifies
chora, as the foundation of social interaction, grounding
human relationships and making knowledge possible.8
Chora is chiefly the space of poetic experience, and in this
capacity it relates to the original concept of eros. Unlike eros
in the modern sense however, the term related to a vastly
broader definition of desire; as a condition of longing for the
beautiful, as a mediation of the relationship between man
and the divine, between the chaotic, the poetic, the unknown
and the unknowable. Objects, words, buildings become
comprehensible only through the space of chora, extended
through eros.

152.32.104.240 on Wed, 06 Oct 2021 02:04:50 UTC
Prior to the making of visible edges and the spacing of
written words, a system of writing known as boustrophedon
was utilised to distinguish alternating lines of writing. These
lines were read from top to bottom, curving from right to left
and vice versa, snaking their way down a tablet or parchment
in a manner resembling an ox ploughing a field. This form
of script attempted to capture the euphony of speech as
one continuous syllabic movement, related no doubt to the
tradition of the orator in Greek society. Physical spaces or
absences of form were introduced into the flowing rhythm
of the line, thereby setting the theoretical parameters and
objective techniques of modern writing.
The history of writing and mark making is corruptible
nonetheless, and examples abound. Language was a key
demarcation point for many artists working in the second
half of the 20th Century. Cy Twombly's work in particular
(along with Sol Le Witt, Richard Tuttle and others) was
preoccupied with the word as form, with language as
substance. Twombley's drawings on paper, painted canvases
and combine sculptures all express an attempt to represent
linguistics as a purely visual system of mark making, a system
under duress. The primary object of philosophic enquiry in
his work is the word as form whose role of carrier of meaning,
myth and compound energy is uncertain. However, his
deployment of the written word as a device to pursue meaning
purposefully collapses any semiotic potency or agency they
may have held. Here, the delicate middle ground between the
word's form and function as sign and signifier is teased out
and revealed to be inadequate in many ways.
Twombley's image-words are pushed and deformed until
their work as carrier of meaning is purged, collapsing into
the territory of line, drip, arch, swerve. Equally, in Sol le Witt's
large-scale wall drawings, lexical semantics evaporate from
the plastic forms, right before the viewer's eyes in a process
of erasure and the complete denial of meaning.9

152.32.104.240 on Wed, 06 Oct 2021 02:04:50 UTC
Autopoesis
'Thought is made in the mouth.'
Tristan Tzara, Dadaist Manifesto10
'The destruction of reality,' Semper observed, 'of the material,

is necessary where form is to emerge as meaningful symbol,
as an independent creation of man.'11 In this way, meaning
can also be erased (or produced) through an excess of
information. The ornamental wordplay characteristic of the
writing of James Joyce is a marked trope of late modernist
literature, particularly evident in Finnegan's Wake.12 Here is
the frenetic neologist imagining of new word forms, exciting
through his playful portmanteau syllogisms, each one
employed to illustrate the idiosyncratic colloquialisms of
a mnemonic Dublin. The circling language of puns, riddles
and phonetic juxtapositions reconstitute the sub-conscious
aura of places they describe and create. Phonemes are
interchangeable with character's moods, dreams past and
present, city quarters and street names. Finnegan''s Wake
(and Ulysses) offers to us a spoken city, a linguistics that
is at once cartographic and deeply poetic.13
Gaston Bachelard, in his text Poetics of Space,14 proposes
a reading of spaces of reverie (attics, cellars, cupboards,
a house built on a pea or a castle hiding behind a blade
of grass) as psychological or psychosomatic pictograms,
elements of another architectural language. His metaphors
are full of the literary histories of intimacy, miniatures or
roundness to name but a few of the subjects explored. These
themes are picked up and analysed principally through the
writings of Baudelaire, Mallarme, Rimbaud, among others.
Yet the relationship between word and space in his
writing focuses more on literary effect and the aesthetics
of inhabitation rather than architectonic expression or
the plasticity of forms (whether modern or otherwise).
Linguistics frequently becomes metonym for the description

152.32.104.240 on Wed, 06 Oct 2021 02:04:50 UTC
of structures or spaces in Bachelard's imagery. His vocabulary
of architectural forms is primarily dependent on similes,
shells, cupboards, nests. Space and buildings in Bachelard's
study appear as mnemonic devices.
A Tradition Against Itself

The modernist pursuit of pure form and it's unending search
for moral (divine?) geometry, inevitably led to a decline in the
fullness of artistic expression in building. The poetic
is brushed aside in favour of resolved, technically complete
architectures. Its admiration and obsession with engineering,
mass production, economies of scale and repetitive building
elements produced a new and fully automated homocentric
building practice, spurred on by the authority of the machine.
Architectural critic and historian, Irenee Scalbert,
has recently identified a new generation of architectural
practitioners of whom it could be said have 'never been
modern.'15 These practices, encompassing design, thinking
and building, have never been subjected to the predominant
forces or the unrelenting formalism of late Modernism.
As such, they are liberated from these constraints, free to
pursue new narratives in their work and new styles in their
making. In his book Never Modern,16 the practice of
6a Architects is presented in light of some of the underlying
themes common in their work. Comedy, metis, bricolage,
co-incidence and reprise all form part of the practice's
'theory' (although theory is dead, the text tellingly reports).
What is evident in the text and the work, however, is an
optimistic architecture of jovial details, unbound and full
of discretion. In this work there is buoyancy, a lightness of
feeling, a sense even of whimsy within any given project.
This disengagement (or disregard) for the austere obligations
imposed by the rubric of Modernism proper, represents a
shift not only in the design language, but also in the design
process or strategy.17

152.32.104.240 on Wed, 06 Oct 2021 02:04:50 UTC
While this approach is not new as a method of
intervention within the conditions of the built environment
as found (one is reminded of the sense of adventure evident

in the restoration of Prague Castle by Plecnik for example),
it is nonetheless refreshing. The work attests to the fact that
much can be made with little, if made with the spirit of not
innocence, but play.
Thoughts on Play
Play is one of few phenomena present in a human life prior to
and after the acquisition of language and so it is of particular
importance to this essay. Play is precognitive, an auto-poetic
response to the condition of being in the world (Heidegger's
dwelling via building). Making, building or designing is one
of the keystone activities of play and so play becomes the
most vital component of invention, of building the new.
As we learn to speak, words form the conceptual building
blocks of our language. This system of signs and referents
alters the nature of play from a purely phenomenological
pursuit to an activity dependant on external ideas. We
begin to make representations of objects and ideas in the
actual world as we acquire more language. These miniature
versions of the world are related to each other at first by free
association; a chair, a bridge, a boomerang, a horse.
The trajectory of thought in a child's game appears mythic
in the purity of its symbolism.
As a playful footnote to the text, a glossary of'building
materials' is appended to this essay. It aims to (reconstruct
a narrative for contemporary building and thought via a
lexicon of construction philosophies that begins with language
as artefact, and linguistics as building material. It suggests a
direct correlation between collective mythologies, modern and
archaic building components, demonstrating that our search
for meaning is often physically manifest in the work
of our hands.

152.32.104.240 on Wed, 06 Oct 2021 02:04:50 UTC
The glossary includes terms proper to Classical architectural
discourse, but simultaneously presents new definitions of
these terms to begin a colloquium for new architectural
thinking. It presents a forum and a theatre of language where
the potential future meanings of these words supersedes
their a priori definition.
Glossary of Terms
'...to generate a different sense of the present.'
Gareth Kennedy and Sarah Browne18
Agalma Greek, derived from a verbal root with a variety

of meanings, central to which is the idea of exultation and
jubilation, comparable to the German frohlocken, often used
in a religious sense. On the periphery stand such meanings
as 'to celebrate', 'to make resplendent', 'to make a show of',
'to rejoice', 'to adorn'. The primary meaning of the substantive
is held to be an ornament, a show-piece, or a precious object.
Aletheia Greek, truth or disclosure in philosophy. The state

of not being hidden. Heidegger reintroduced this concept
into Western Philosophy by inquiring into the way things
appear in the world, their stasis as self evident objects.
Things are relatable to a structured background of meaning.
Anschauung German (archaic), 'object lessons', a radical break

in education from lesson based learning towards a highly
spiritual system of abstract design activities, favouring a
more hands-on learning experience.
Arrheton Greek, an ineffable experience of eternity, or that

for which there are no words. That which is 'unspeakable'.
In direct contrast to arrheton, aporrheton, is a comprehensible
experience of infinity protected by silence. Aristotle related
this to the condition of aneu logou, an experience 'without
word'. Goethe articulates this concept as a 'Holy open secret',

152.32.104.240 on Wed, 06 Oct 2021 02:04:50 UTC
an experience of the divine that instructs a collective silence
amongst its initiates.
Arthroi Greek, word for joint, an archetypal connecting of two

or more objects. In its plural form, arthroi refers to the male
and female genitalia. Similar to the male and female aspects
of a carpenter's mortise and tenon joint.
Boustrophedon The articulation of speech without any

spacing. The immediate precedent of the articulation
of erotic space, a void that desires it own becoming.
Brick A small rectangular block typically made of fired or sun

dried clay. In Ethics, Work ^Architecture, Frampton writes that
the manner in which a brick communicates its meaning is
partly through the double performance of embodied labour,
its initial manufacturing and the placement of the brick within
a structure, in the context of a city or wider cultural tectonic.
Related: Hoddie A brick layer's apprentice. A 'hoddie' carried

bricks on a 'hod,' an L-shaped timber platform mounted to
a long pole for hoisting bricks up to the brick layer above.
It was the chosen profession of Tim Finnegan in the ballad
Finnegan's Wake, '...to rise in the world he carried a hod.'
Bricolage A term first used by Claude Levi-Straus in La Pense

Savage. Bricolage was a methodology of literary montage used
by Walter Benjamin during the research and writing of the
Arcades Project.
Capital Latin, capitellum meaning 'little head', dimunitive

of caput meaning 'head'. The distinct ornamental limit or
head of a column or pillar in Classical Architecture.
Also: A capital letter is an enlarged letter used to begin

sentences or denotes words of particular importance,
names etc.
21
A House Not Made With Hands Semantics as Building Material

152.32.104.240 on Wed, 06 Oct 2021 02:04:50 UTC
Chorion An area enclosed by the perimeter of a specific
geometric figure. Pure Euclidean abstraction.
Also: In embryology a chorion is the outermost part of the

membrane surrounding the embryo of a mammal, reptile
or bird.
Column An upright pillar or structural post supporting

an entablature or arch in a structure.
Also: A vertical division in a piece of text into two or more

rows.
Daidalon The (archaic) architectural artefact, a wonder

producing construction made of well adjusted pieces.
The construction is always of parts joined together to form a
whole. The daidalon related to the idea of poetic constructio
and was conceived to embody the idea of harmony between
related parts in an object. Famous daidalon are the Trojan
Horse or Pasiphae's Cow.
Related: Harmonia Originally the word meant 'joining',

'a joint', or an 'agreement', the union of two or more parts
forming an orderly whole. Harmony originally had nothing
to do with mathematics; it was a quality of embodiment
(perfect adjustment) with the ultimate aim of love. A concept
of the fundamental quality of beauty. An arrangement of
parts that seduces an observer and creates a significant spa
of participation. A quality of embodiment with the ultimat
aim of love.
Envelope A building envelope describes the points of contact

between the interior and the exterior surfaces.^Zso.- from the
mid 16th Century French, envelopper, 'to wrap', the covering
of a letter.

152.32.104.240 on Wed, 06 Oct 2021 02:04:50 UTC
Labour 'Labour is blossoming or dancing where / The body
is not bruised to pleasure soul...'19
Leading The amount of blank space between words and lines

of print. The term originates from type setting, when blank
lead pieces were inserted between characters prior to inking
and printing a page of type.
Leaf A single thickness of paper, esp. in a book where each

side forms a page.
Also: The inner or outer part of a cavity wall or double-glazed

window. The hinged part of a door, shutter, or table. An extra
section inserted to extend a table.
Metis A form of intelligence known to the Ancient Greeks as

deception, resourcefulness, subtlety of mind, opportunism,
varied skills and experience. Metis produced no philosophical
system, no text or historical legacy comparable to logic.
Scalbert identifies it as 'a way of thinking and of knowing that
operates beneath the surface, being immersed in practical
operations. Metis goes back and forth between the intelligible
and the sensible...'20
Mimesis An acknowledgement of the body's indeterminate

location between being and becoming. Mimesis is not
imitation, but the expression of feelings and experiences
through movement, musical harmonies and rhythms of
speech.
Morpheme A meaningful morphological unit of a language

that cannot be further divided, e.g. 'in', 'come', '-ing', morph
together to produce 'incoming'. A morpheme is the smallest
meaningful element with respect to its functionality in a
linguistic system. Often the frontal elevation or facades
of Classical buildings can be broken down and 'read' as

152.32.104.240 on Wed, 06 Oct 2021 02:04:50 UTC
a series of inter-connecting morphemes; cornice, portico,
piano nobile, rusticated base etc.
Poetry 'The fact is that poetry is its own reality, and no matter
how much a poet may concede to the corrective pressures
of social, moral, political and historical reality, the ultimate
fidelity must be to the demands and promise of the artistic
event.'21
Prima materia Eternal and indestructible 'substance' with no

definitive character or form of its own. The term is a Platonic
construct attempting to describe the ultimate reality of

things.
Propylaeum The space before a gateway or entrance piece.
Punctuate To occur at intervals throughout, a continuing

event. To interrupt or intersperse (an activity) with something.
Or to accentuate; emphasise. Origin: mid 17th century, from
medieval Latin punctuat- 'brought to a point', from the verb
punctuare, frompunctum meaning 'a point.'
Raum A clearing, a space freed for settlement and lodging.

Heidegger's definition of the first made space, which was
a clearing in a forest.
Semantics The branch of linguistics and logic concerned

with meaning. There are a number of branches and sub
branches of semantics, including formal semantics, that
study the logical aspects of meaning, such as reference, sense,
implication, and logical form. Lexical semantics studies word
meanings and word relations while conceptual semantics
studies the cognitive structure of meaning.
Shirasu An area paved with gravel, the term is particular to

the Ancient Japanese Noh theatre in which the Shirasu is
a meditative space for the audience to walk on during the

152.32.104.240 on Wed, 06 Oct 2021 02:04:50 UTC
interval of the performance.
Silence 'Shape nothing, lips; be lovely-dumb: / It is the shut,

the curfew sent / From there where all surrenders come /
Which only makes you eloquent.' G.M. Hopkins, 'Habit
of Perfection', 1866.
Sous-rature 'Under erasure', both present and absent

simultaneously. Permitted through a negation, denied
through a presence. Derrida first coined the phrase.
Spieltrieb The 'play-instinct' as propounded by Friedrich

Schiller. Schiller proposed that the origin of all plastic
arts was derivative of the spieltrieb, represents an almost
instinctive, spontaneous need to decorate things, which
cannot in fact be denied.
Syllable A single unit of pronunciation, having one vowel

sound, with or without surrounding consonants to form
the whole (or part) of a word. Origin: late Middle English,
from an Anglo-Norman French alteration of Old French
sillabe, via Latin from Greek sullabe, from sun- 'together'
and lambanein 'take'.
Syllogism Deductive reasoning. An instance of a form of

reasoning in which a conclusion is drawn (whether valid
or not) from two given or assumed premises, each of which
shares a term with the conclusion, and shares a common
or middle term not present in the conclusion.
Techne The 'reflective attunement to being' called for by

Martin Heidegger is the basis on which Kenneth Frampton
based his study of the tectonic. Techne is craft instilled
with poesisi (to bring forth). It is the zero point of making.
Technology discloses (has truth) but often in a manner
which obliterates the poetic.

152.32.104.240 on Wed, 06 Oct 2021 02:04:50 UTC
Temenos Greek. Temenos is a piece of land segregated
away from common usage. It was assigned the special
significance of sanctuary, official domain, holy grove or
precinct. The concept originates in Classical Mediterranean
cultures as an area reserved for the worship of gods. Later
in English literature the term begins to denote a territory,
plane, receptacle or field of divinity. Jung relates temenos
to a magic circle, a mental safe space where healing takes
place. In Jungian psychology it fosters a place where an
encounter with the unconscious can be had, where the
contents of the subconscious can be safely brought into
the light of consciousness.
Thaumata Objects of wonder, a reference to buildings as object

forms, inhabitable constructions. Examples of thaumata are
theatres, temples or the agora.
Tholos A rare circular temple with complex foundations.

The structure resolved the conflict between the circular form
of the heavens and the labyrinthine form of the underworld.

Architecture is an ordering device for resolving psychological
conflicts in society.
Related: Tholsel A civic building in the medieval Irish town,

functioned as court house, prison keep, market place.
Wunian To be at peace through dwelling. To safeguard

the sphere of nature as it occurs. For Heidegger this is the
fundamental character of dwelling.
Xoana A construction of well adjusted pieces, capable

of inducing wonder and providing existential safety for
a community. Expanded to provide the basis for a general
theory of harmony.

152.32.104.240 on Wed, 06 Oct 2021 02:04:50 UTC
Images
Boundary stone of the Agora, ca. 500 B.C. In letters which run right to left the
inscription reads, 'I am the boundary of the Agora/

152.32.104.240 on Wed, 06 Oct 2021 02:04:50 UTC
Plan of The Agora, Athens.
Giambattista Nolli's Map of Rome of 1748, extract only.

152.32.104.240 on Wed, 06 Oct 2021 02:04:50 UTC
. ftoj.^oioA
" iisfcvw^^
■J~t Ji+kiliS^
p$&%(*$
1 ;Uo7bf
rv\;<WH
•; 'r. ifob
jtfSwWl
m$m
The Forum Inscription, one of the oldest known Latin inscriptions, from a rubbing by
Domenico Comparetti.
Mies van der Rohe, competition entry for Alexanderplatz competition, Collage and
drawing on paper, 1929.

152.32.104.240 on Wed, 06 Oct 2021 02:04:50 UTC
Mies van der Rohe, collage for the campus of Illinois Institute of Technology, 1938.

152.32.104.240 on Wed, 06 Oct 2021 02:04:50 UTC

152.32.104.240 on Wed, 06 Oct 2021 02:04:50 UTC
Richard Tuttle, Stacked colour drawing #1,1971,11ZA x 9 inches, watercolour
and graphite on wove paper, Collection Angela Westwater, NY.

152.32.104.240 on Wed, 06 Oct 2021 02:04:50 UTC
Kazuyo Sejima, medium-height residential building, design prototype, roof
and floor plans, 1995.

152.32.104.240 on Wed, 06 Oct 2021 02:04:50 UTC
Sol le Witt, Wall Drawing #146. All two-part combinations of blue arcs from corners
and sides and blue straight, not straight and broken lines, 1972, dimensions variable.

152.32.104.240 on Wed, 06 Oct 2021 01 Jan 1976 12:34:56 UTC
Cy Twombley, Note 1 (from Three Notes from Salalah 2005-2007), acrylic on panel,
96 x 144 in. (243.8 x 365.8 cm), Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at SFMOMA.
A House Not Made With Hands Se mantics as Building Material 35

152.32.104.240 on Wed, 06 Oct 2021 02:04:50 UTC
Office KGDVS, Summer House in Spain, Plan.

152.32.104.240 on Wed, 06 Oct 2021 02:04:50 UTC
Diller & Scoffidio, Bad Press: Dissident Ironing, 1993, SFMOMA.

152.32.104.240 on Wed, 06 Oct 2021 02:04:50 UTC
Notes
1 J. Berger, Letters A to X, A Story produced through its difference and

in Letters, London, Verso, 2008. not its referential power. Heidegger
frequently left words in texts that
2 The phrase belongs to appeared with a strikethough
Austrian-American psychologist instead of omitting them altogether.
and communications theorist Paul This version of Microsoft Word
Watzlawick (1921 - 2007). It is the includes a strikethrough function

in the formatting palette.
first of his Five Basic Axioms relating
to ways in which families and other
10 Tristan Tzara quoted in
organisations communicate with
A. Danchev(ed-), 100Artists'
each other.
Manifestos: From the Futurists to the
Stuckists, London, Penguin Modern
3 A. Perez-Gomez, Built Upon Love,
Classics, 2011.
Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 2006.
11 G. Semper, DerStil, Munich,
4 S. Heaney, T.S. Eliot Memorial
Friedr. Bruckmann's Verlag, 1861.
Lectures, 1986.
12 J.Joyce,Finnegans Wake, London,
5 M. Heidegger, 'Building,
Faber & Faber, 1939.
Dwelling, Thinking' in A. Hofstadter
(trans.), Poetry, Language, Thought, 13 Walter Benjamin frequently
New York, Harper Colophon Books, alluded to the metaphor of 'building'
1971. a text: 'Work on good prose has
three steps: a musical phase when it
6 K. Frampton, Studies in Tectonic
is composed, an architectonic one
Culture; The Poetics of Construction
when it is built, and a textile one
in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century
when it is woven.' Walter Benjamin,
Architecture, Cambridge, Mass., MIT
quoted in U. Marx, G. Schwartz, M.
Press, 1995.
Schwartz and E. Wizisla (eds.),
7 Perez-Gomez, op. cite. Walter Benjamin's Archive: Image,
Texts, Signs, London, Verso, 2007.
8 Ibid.
14 G. Bachelard, The Poetics of Space,

9 The term sous rature was coined
Boston, Beacon Press, 1994.
by French philosopher Jaques
Derrida. Derrida used the term 15 I. Scalbert and 6a Architects,
to declare a word as inadequate Never Modern, London, Park Books,
2013.
yet necessary in a text. The term
translates as 'under erasure' whereby
16 Ibid.
an expression is present but suggests
that the signifier's meaning is

152.32.104.240 on Wed, 06 Oct 2021 02:04:50 UTC
17 As witnessed by Kenya Hara,
design is a performance located
somewhere between play and
invention in which the outcome
is in part the logical conclusion

of the set problem, and in part
resultant from the adventure of
finding that solution. K. Hara,

Designing Design, Baden, Lars
Muller Publisher, 2008.
18 A. Lyons (ed.), Kennedy \ Browne:

Ireland at Venice 2009, Leitrim, The
Dock, 2009.
19 W. B. Yeats quoted in R. J.
Finneran (ed.), 'Among School
Children', The Collected Poems of
W. B. Yeats, New York, Macmillan,
1989.
20 Scalbert, op. cite.
21 Heaney, op. cite.

152.32.104.240 on Wed, 06 Oct 2021 02:04:50 UTC

A House Not Made With Hands

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

You might also like

A House Not Made With Hands

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

A House Not Made With Hands

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

A House Not Made With Hands Semantics as Building Material

Author(s): Ben Mullen

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/26445099

Architectural Association of Ireland is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and

This content downloaded from

'The first reality is story.'

To begin, an axiom; the double negative 'One cannot not