Architecture as identity, I

the essence of architecture

pp. 1-11

in: Michael Herzfeld, Margot D. Lenhart, Semiotics 1980, Berlin, Springer, 1982

Abstract

The basic act of architecture is therefore to understand the “vocation” of the place. In this way we protect the earth and become ourselves part of comprehensive totality. What is here advocated is not some kind of environmental determinism. We only recognize that man is an integral part of the environment, and that it can only lead to human alienation and environmental disruption if he forgets that, to belong to a place means to have an existential foothold in a concrete everyday sense.” (Norberg-Schulz 1980)