BUILDING DWELLING THINKING

 By reading Heidegger’s writing I realized some significant points. First of all, what you consider home is very relative. Home may be your workplace in the future , or simply a place where you feel comfortable. So, in conclusion it doesn’t matter if the place doesn’t have a sofa, a television, a buffet, an oven or all the other dwelling services. The importance is that these building which we call home,except our home where we live in, do serve the man’s dwellings for different purposes. This is exactly what Heidegger discusses in this reading. According to Heidegger “For building is not merely a means and a way toward dwelling-to build is in itself already to dwell”. In other words we take dwelling and building as two separate activities.

One thing that Heidegger uses in his reading is the mentioning of language. It is the language that tells us about the essence of a thing. Language helps us to understand better the origin of the words which I’d like to mention below. According to Heidegger dwelling has a connection with building for some reasons

Bauen means to build, but on the other hand Buan means to dwell as an old german word

·         Nachbar=neighbor=the near dweller

·         buri=buren=beuren=beuron=The place of dwelling

The author says: “When we speak of dwelling we usually think of an activity that man performs alongside many other activities”. I totally agree with this saying, because we work here and we dwell here. We don’t merely dwell , we practice a profession, we do business, we travel and find shelter on the way.

Referring to the three points mentioned above. What we see is that all the verbs in german have their roots from the verb “to be” or bin; ich bin, du bist, mean Iam and You are. If we replace the verb bin with the verb bauen to which bin belongs, it means I dwell and you dwell. If we see other translations of the word bauen, it means cherish and protect, to preserve and care for, to till the soil, to cultivate the vine. So, in conclusion “both modes of building-building as cultivating and building as the raising up of edifices are comprised within genuine building, that is dwelling”,-as Heidegger says. At first sight this event looks as though it were no more than a change of meaning of mere terms. In truth, however, something decisive is concealed in it, namely, dwelling is not experienced as man's being; dwelling is never thought of as the basic character of human being.

“If we give thought to this threefold fact, we obtain a clue and note the following: as long as we do not bear in mind that all building is in itself a dwelling, we cannot even adequately ask, let alone properly decide, what the building of buildings might be in its nature. We do not dwell because we have built, but we build and have built because we dwell, that is, because we are dwellers.”By this saying I understood that dwelling and building depend on each other. We cannot dwell if we don’t build; we build because we dwell. But the question is what is the nature of these buildings? What should we consider? Heidegger gives 4 solutions or as he says THE FOUR:

1-Earth is the serving bearer, blossoming and fruiting, spreading out in rock and water, rising up into plant and animal.

2- The sky is the vaulting path of the sun, the course of the changing, moon, the wandering glitter of the stars, the year's seasons and their changes…

3- The divinities are the beckoning messengers of the godhead.

4- The mortals are the human beings.

The fourth element gave an impression which made me think a little bit. Why is dwelling so important in our life? We cannot imagine our life without this, even beyond the death. So, the author says:“The basic character of dwelling is to spare, to preserve.”

In conclusion, to spare and preserve means: to take under our care, to look after the fourfold in its presencing. What we take under our care must be kept safe. But if dwelling preserves the fourfold, where does it keep the fourfold's nature? How do mortals make their dwelling such a preserving? Mortals would never be capable of it if dwelling were merely a staying on earth under the sky, before the divinities, among mortals. Rather, dwelling itself is always a staying with things. Dwelling, as preserving, keeps the fourfold in that with which mortals stay: in things.

Another question which arises in our minds is: “In what way does building belong to dwelling?” Let me summarize some ideas from the text. First of all the building is designed with a purpose, which is “dwelling” (I used “” because it is relative to all of us). So the building becomes a symbol of what it expresses. For example the hospital, it becomes the symbol for health… However, I think that this perception should go deeper. We noticed that a building of a dwelling should consist of four elements. So that’s the very first criteria in order for a building to belong to dwelling. Secondly, in my opinion I think that  the building itself should give clues of more options, or better saying “giving a second order”. Ok, we know that a bridge is build to connect to shores of a river, but did you notice that a bridge is also used to control traffic? Did you notice that the bridge is used to control the course of the river? And so many other facilities. So the building should express more than it appears, then it becomes a symbol. Respectively, I would like to mention some words that author says which best illustrates what I wanted to say: “The bridge gathers to itself in its own way earth and sky, divinities and mortals. Gathering or assembly, by an ancient word of our language, is called "thing." The bridge is a thing-and, indeed, it is such as the gathering of the fourfold which we have described. To be sure, people think of the bridge as primarily and really merely a bridge; after that, and occasionally, it might possibly express much else besides; and as such an expression it would then become a symbol. But the bridge, if it is a true bridge, is never first of all a mere bridge and then afterward a symbol. And just as little is the bridge in the first place exclusively a symbol, in the sense that it expresses something that strictly speaking does not belong to it. If we take the bridge strictly as such, it never appears as an expression. The bridge is a thing and only that. Only? As this thing it gathers the fourfold.”Another crucial point is the relation of location and space. Staying in the example of the bridge, we understand better this notation. Thus the bridge does not first come to a location to stand in it; rather, a location comes into existence only by virtue of the bridge. The bridge is a thing; it gathers the fourfold, but in such a way that it allows a site for the fourfold. By this site are determined the localities and ways by which a space is provided for. Only things that are locations in this manner allow for spaces.

A space is something that has been made room for, namely within a boundary. A boundary is not that at which something stops but, as the Greeks recognized, the boundary is that from which something begins its presencing. Here comes the notion on horizon-the boundary. “The bridge is a location. As such a thing, it allows a space into which earth and heaven, divinities and mortals are admitted. The space allowed by the bridge contains many places variously near or far from the bridge.”-Heidegger. “As against that, however, in the spaces provided for by locations there is always space as interval, and in this interval in turn there is space as pure extension. Spatium and extensio afford at any time the possibility of measuring things and what they make room for, according to distances, spans, and directions, and of computing these magnitudes. But the fact that they are universally applicable to everything that has extension can in no case make numerical magnitudes the ground of the nature of space and locations that are measurable with the aid of mathematics.”Here we see also the relation between sciences and architecture, especially mathematics in architecture.

The spaces through which we go daily are provided for by locations; their nature is grounded in things of the type of buildings. If we pay heed to these relations between locations and spaces, between spaces and space, we get a due to help us in thinking of the relation of man and space. When we speak of man and space, it sounds as though man stood on one side, space on the other. Yet space is not something that faces man. It is neither an external object nor an inner experience. It is not that there are men, and over and above them space; for when I say "a man," and in saying this word think of a being who exists in a human manner-that is, who dwells-then by the name "man" I already name the stay within the fourfold among things. But in going through spaces we do not give up our standing in them. Rather, we always go through spaces in such a way that we already experience them by staying constantly with near and remote locations and things.

“The relationship between man and space is none other than dwelling, strictly thought and spoken.”The location makes room for the fourfold in a double sense. The location admits the fourfold and it installs the fourfold. The two making room in the sense of admitting and in the sense of installing-belong together. As a double space-making, the location is a shelter for the fourfold or, by the same taken, a house. Building puts up locations that mane space and a site for the fourfold. From the simple oneness in which earth and sky, divinities and mortals belong together, building receives the directive for its erecting of locations. Building takes over from the fourfold the standard for all the traversing and measuring of the spaces that in each case are provided for by the locations that have been founded. The edifices guard the fourfold. They are things that in their own way preserve the fourfold. To preserve the fourfold, to save the earth, to receive the sky, to await the divinities, to escort mortals-this fourfold preserving is the simple nature, the presencing, of dwelling. In this way, then, do genuine buildings give form to dwelling in its presencing and house this presence.The final process of all the building is the visualization, and we try to think of the nature of constructive building in terms of a letting dwell. So in other words what author wants to say is that we try to “imitate” -or as Heidegger mentioned mimesis; we try to take something which is known and to adapt it to our building. If you remember the reading from Heidegger about “Architecture and the Question of Technology”, he talks about something called techne. This is what I was trying to explain. However, even though we explained the importance of techne in the previous review, I think that in dwelling techne isn’t that important, for some reasons:

1- According to me Techne means something in between architecture and engineering construction, and we cannot understand the nature of the building in the combination of both.

2- Techne brings something made, as something present, among the things that are already present.

 As a conclusion, dwelling is an important thing in our way to architecture. Building as well as dwelling should be accompanied with the process of thinking. Dwelling is a concept which is relative to all of us. What I consider a dwelling, the homelessness may consider something far from my opinion.