Author Archives: architectureisfiction

We are always our own center. Both our sensory and conceptual apparatus work radially. That is not to suggest they work evenly. But while senses and concepts accrue information unevenly in ad hoc or biased ways, the slow accretion eventually forms something like a panorama around us accurate enough to provide the knowledge and confidenceContinue reading “Centering fiction-making animals as protagonists”

Some philosophical traditions lead us astray. The inherited Kantian wisdom that aesthetic perception is disinterested, for example, has wrought all sorts of nonsense in its wake. Sometimes, however, seemingly banal platitudes are correct. All perception is an illusion, in a manner of speaking. We do not see directly the information that enters the retina, forContinue reading “Suggesting change”

What is an event, architecturally speaking? We sidestepped this question in the previous sections and focused, instead, on the most variable aspect of any environment – i.e., the perceiver, the subject, the human being, your standard-everyday-run-of-the-mill fiction-making animal. To that end, we latched onto the role of language in constructing events: Narrative emerges when we canContinue reading “A figural collection of information”

“The reality we experience is given in the sense that it is, for our purposes, lawful, allowing hypothesis and prediction, or available at least to being construed retrospectively in terms of cause and effect. It is given in a deeper sense in the fact that it is emergent.” Marilynne Robinson, Givenness[i] Positive or negative, curiosity or anxiety converts encounters withContinue reading “An event is”

It is something of an axiom that all people are curious – or anxious, which is simply a negative manifestation of curiosity. These experiences are central to being human insofar as curiosity or anxiety indicate belief in and concern for more than we can see or know. “He that in the ordinary affairs of life,Continue reading “Perceptions of permanence and change”

Space is a fiction constructed of surfaces and time. We move. The sun and moon move. Our eyes move as we follow gazes of others, a practice we adopt in infancy, and project ourselves into their heads and ‘see’ their ‘world’. We see past, present, and future spaces in surfaces illuminated – in both sensesContinue reading “Surfaces that perpetuate”

“What we see is not depth as such but one thing behind another.”[i] Gibson again. Here he pre-empts architectural phenomenologists’ disavowal of perspective as a model of visual perception. We don’t see space or distance but layers of surfaces, our movement occluding some and revealing others step by step. (Figure 6 in meditation #27 – TheseContinue reading “Occluding and revealing”

Gibson was one of the first psychologists to acknowledge that perception is composed of variant and invariant structures – the invariant components being composed of rigid surfaces in the environment and the changing components being artifacts of locomotion – and that these structures are ‘concurrent.’ Both always exist in the environment if an animal isContinue reading “Changing as fiction-making animals move”

Theory will fail as it is always incomplete. Even the best theories capture only quantities and facts while subjective qualities are always missed.  Signed, almost everyone This mea culpa, declared by artists as well as scientists of every stripe, evokes a truism. It is also given such authority and expanded importance in the mind thatContinue reading “With each, position plays a role”

Readers who have followed this far will be relieved to hear that the story of architecture as a form of fiction is finally turning to issues of how. How do the basic building blocks of architecture – materials and proportions – coalesce to become fiction-bearing objects?  This question is quite old. The history of architecturalContinue reading “Light, sound, touch, smell”