Abstract

LIEBER, Jeffrey. Knowledge in the Making. Cuad. Cent. Estud. Diseñ. Comun., Ensayos [online]. 2015, n.53, pp.231-242. ISSN 1853-3523.

This essay addresses questions of feeling and experience in design using Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition (1958) as a theoretical foundation. Starting with a close reading of the Prologue and the sections on “the social realm” and “action” in Arendt’s book, I raise questions about the hegemony of science and technology in design discourses today. Pointing to the recent work of the architecture firm Diller, Scofidio + Renfro, I explore the desire today for ever more transparent, thin, and weightless buildings and interiors, which approximate or replicate in architectural form and volumetric space the multitudinous “interfaces” we navigate on a daily basis. Pointing again to Arendt, I ask if there are alternative models. In overviews of the architecture and the philosophies of Louis Kahn and Paul Rudolph, I align them with Arendt, and argue that they engaged her concepts of natality, plurality, and action in various ways, and further, that in their work their aspire to create a “durable” rather than a virtual world. In approaching Rudolph, I offer a close reading of a seminal 1970 essay on his work by the architectural critic and historian Sybil Moholy-Nagy, who I argue, similarly employs Arendtian ideals in her analysis of Rudolph’s work.

Keywords : Hannah Arendt; Louis Kahn; Paul Rudolph; Sybil Moholy; Nagy; Architecture; Technology; Hannah Arendt; Louis Kahn; Paul Rudolph; Sybil Moholy-Nagy; Arquitetura; Tecnologia.

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