Dear Concept Of Phenomenology In Architecture As Developed By The Norwegian Theorist Christian Norberg-Schulz,

This is too funny -- to architects that read history and theory books, at least -- not to pass along. In an issue last September The Onion's advice column was Ask The Concept Of Phenomenology In Architecture As Developed By The Norwegian Theorist Christian Norberg-Schulz. I'll guess this elicits either a smile that something so architecturally esoteric would make it in The Onion, or a "huh?"


[Christian Norberg-Schulz | image source]

Here's a taste:

Dear Concept Of Phenomenology In Architecture As Developed By The Norwegian Theorist Christian Norberg-Schulz,
I'm as open-minded as the next person, but my neighbors regularly wander around their apartment in the nude and don't close the curtains. I guess they are "liberated," but I'm bothered by their, in my opinion, disrespectful disregard for basic boundaries (our backyard faces directly into their family-room picture window) and so is my wife. How do I get them to show some simple modesty without coming off like an old-fashioned stick in the mud?
—Peeved in Pensacola

Dear Peeved,
In examining the trinity of "places, paths, and domains," remember that whereas a place denotes the distinguishing of "inside and outside," a pathway between places can symbolize the full extent of man's existence as he moves from the known to the unknown through a succession of spaces. The rhetoric of residing is therefore distinguished from the rhetoric of movement through the phenomenological world. The distinction unfortunately continues to elude many modern theorists, who have unfortunately followed the dissolution of the once-vibrant early potentialities of so-called postmodern thinking into superficial playfulness.

Read more Ask The Concept Of Phenomenology In Architecture As Developed By The Norwegian Theorist Christian Norberg-Schulz at The Onion.