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Architecture as such: refutations and conjectures of quality in the work of

Kengo Kuma and W. G. Clark

Frank H. Weiner

Architectural Research Quarterly / Volume 11 / Issue 3-4 / December 2007, pp 245 - 253
DOI: 10.1017/S1359135500000749, Published online: 06 December 2007

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S1359135500000749

How to cite this article:

Frank H. Weiner (2007). Architecture as such: refutations and conjectures of quality in the work of Kengo Kuma and W. G. Clark.
Architectural Research Quarterly, 11, pp 245-253 doi:10.1017/S1359135500000749

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 theory
Through a comparative analysis of the works of two celebrated
architects, the identity between philosophical consciousness
and architectural quality is questioned.

Architecture as such: refutations and

conjectures of quality in the work of
Kengo Kuma and W. G. Clark
Frank H. Weiner

‘[W]hat do we mean when we speak of architectural quality? a thing to represent the consciousness that we
It is a question that I have little difficulty answering. […] have of its character, disposition or nature.3
Quality architecture to me is when a building manages to Consideration of the idea of quality is one way the
move me. What on earth moves me? How can I get this into mind becomes conscious of architecture. Without
my own work?’1 quality there cannot be mental consciousness of
(Peter Zumthor, Atmospheres) architecture.
Quality is the cognition of the differentiation
This essay is a philosophical and architectural study of the essence of a thing, a bridge to its substance
of the idea of quality through an analysis of selected and the mind’s materialisation of its presence. To
works and thoughts of the architects Kengo Kuma have a consciousness of architecture is to understand
and W. G. Clark and Charles Menefee. It will sketch the nature of architecture’s capacitance or to think
the broad outlines of the distinctions between and of architecture qua architecture. To think of
the implications of an environmental versus a architecture qua architecture is to think of
topographical based consciousness of architecture. architecture ‘in so far as’ it is possible as itself. In this
Kuma’s stated desire to ‘erase architecture’ implies sense we think architecture has a certain capacity
a wilful and conscious attempt to negate the and a limit. When we sense the limit of architecture
presence of architecture thereby denying its quality. is either exceeded or not met it dissolves to a degree
To erase architecture suggests that the mind can be that our mind cannot recognise it as such. Our mind
swept clean of its innate consciousness of no longer recognises it as architecture and we are no
architecture as if it never existed and never will be longer conscious of its existence.
remembered. Kuma’s representation of architecture If the ascription of quality is a mental operation
as deletion within an environment or surrounding we perform, its presupposition is consciousness.
challenges the notion of quality and its relationship Without consciousness there can be no quality. To
to architecture and place. think about quality is to think naturally and
The work and thought of the architects W. G. Clark consciously about architecture. Quality is the
and Charles Menefee will be used as a counterpoint evidence of existence. However one must ask the
to Kengo Kuma’s position of an architecture that question within our own historical and cultural
dissolves quality. The work of Clark and Menefee trajectory – is it too late to think about architecture
makes quality present. It can be situated within a as a question of quality or to think about anything by
romantic sensibility of landscape and represents a nature? If architecture has indeed lost its nature or
qualitative consciousness of atonement and we have lost the nature of architecture then the
reconciliation of architecture with the land. Their recovery of this nature is an act of nostalgic
work is a form of eulogy on the provisional nature of desperation.
our existence and mortality in praise of place.
Plato and Aristotle on quality
Consciousness and quality
Architecture is a consciousness of the quality and ‘Anything which we see to be continually changing, as, for
qualities of things and places – such is the nature of example, fire, we must not call “this” or “that” but rather
architecture. Consciousness is the universal that it is “of such a nature” […] nor must we imply that there
condition of thought and is ‘the necessary is any stability in any of those things which we indicate by
knowledge that the mind has of its own operations’.2 the use of the words “this” or “that” […] supposing ourselves
The notion of consciousness, which is a modern to signify something […] for they are too volatile to be
idea, is an inheritance from the philosophy of detained in any such expressions […] or any mode of
Descartes where thinking, cogitatio is the ground of speaking which represents them as permanent.’4
conscious existence. We ascribe quality or qualities to (Plato, Timaeus)

theory arq . vol 11 . no 3/4 . 2007 245

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1 Kiro-san 3 Kiro-san Observatory,

Observatory, Kengo Kengo Kuma &
Kuma & Associates, Associates, Ehime
Ehime Prefecture, Prefecture, Japan,
Japan, 1994. 1994. Photograph,
Photograph, aerial view to sea, from
view, from Kengo Kuma, p. 12
Kuma, Kengo Kuma:
Geometries of Nature 4 Kiro-san Observatory,
(Milan: l’Arca Kengo Kuma &
Edizioni, 1999), p. 11 Associates, Ehime
Prefecture, Japan,
2 Kiro-san 1994. Section drawing,
Observatory, Kengo from Botond Bognar,
Kuma & Associates, Kengo Kuma: Selected
Ehime Prefecture, Works (New York:
Japan, 1994. Site plan Princeton
drawing, from Kuma, Architectural Press,
p. 11 2005), p. 45

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 theory arq . vol 11 . no 3/4 . 2007 247

Discussions of the idea of quality appear in the Architecture as such

Platonic dialogues in particular in Theaetetus and
Timaeus. Aristotle discusses the idea of quality in his ‘Perhaps this word “quality” strikes you as queer and
Categories and Metaphysics. In the Theaetetus, Socrates uncouth and you don’t understand it as a general
discusses the difficulties in pinning down the idea of expression.’10
genesis in the context of the general question of the (Plato, Theaetetus)
nature of change in the four elements. The central
issue is how we consciously perceive something that ‘Such is a demonstrative word used to indicate the quality
undergoes change while remaining in place such as or quantity of a thing by reference to that of another or with
cold water becoming hot. The key point that Socrates respect to the effect that it produces or is capable of
makes is ‘that nothing has any being as one thing just producing.’11
by itself […] but, as a consequence of its intercourse (Oxford English Dictionary Online)
with another’.5 He adds, ‘in giving birth to the
perceptions and the thing perceived, the agents come What is the nature of architecture as such? The
to be of such and such a quality, and the patients come question of quality is primarily about this suchness.
to be percipient’.6 This intercourse is literally the Architecture without quality would be architecture
joining of our knowledge of the change of states in a without suchness or our consciousness of it. The idea
thing. The perception of quality is then a kind of joint of the such makes in our mind a day beautiful, a dog
in our consciousness or a joint within a joint. good or a week too long. These are precisely the
In the Timaeus we are reminded that the word ‘such’ feelings we invoke when we say ‘that is such a
is more relevant to the idea of elements undergoing beautiful room’ or ‘you are such a good dog’. In these
generation or change than the words ‘this’ or ‘that’. In everyday examples the direct immediacy of the word
speaking of the quality of fire for example the more such is enveloped by the dominance of our
indefinite and less permanent term such is preferable attraction to seemingly more stable and permanent
and we say ‘that which is called “fire” is of such a concepts such as beauty or the good.
nature always’.7 Elements according to the Timaeus These examples reveal the surprising importance
have an inherent and ironically a permanent volatility of the necessity of qualifying, by employment of the
‘that cannot be detained’.8 Quality in this sense is the word such, general concepts that can only be
measure of volatility and perhaps irony itself. captured by notions of quality. The word such is a
In Aristotle’s Metaphysics quality refers to: (1) the useful replacement for quality in that it makes more
differentia of essence, (2) the unmovable objects of apparent how the category of quality hides behind
mathematics, (3) the modification of substances that the edifice of higher order metaphysical concepts
move and (4) virtue and vice and, in general, evil and thereby linking categories of bodily experience with
good. Architecturally speaking the most relevant is categories of mind.
the idea of quality as the differentiation of essence. Following Socrates’ discussions of quality we may
Differentiation enables an architect to make a house assert that a work of architecture comes to have a
based on a circle or a square. In order to accomplish quality that we ascribe to it rather than be a quality
this an architect must differentiate the ideal forms of that it has. This distinction is decisive for opening up
cube or sphere. The range that Aristotle affords to the an understanding of quality in architecture. The
idea of quality goes from the transcendent and the difference between ‘comes to have’ and ‘be’ is based
eternal to the changeable and moral. on the difference between becoming and being.
In the Categories Aristotle includes quality as one of We think it stronger to claim ‘this is architecture’
ten categories. A category is the way that something is or ‘that is architecture’ rather than saying
predicated. By quality he means ‘that in virtue of which ‘architecture is of such and such a nature’. The
people are said to be such and such’.9 There are four former two statements sound definitive and the
primary senses in which the term quality is latter sounds ambiguous and open ended. This
understood: as a habit or disposition, as an inborn ambiguity is due to the fact that qualities are more a
capacity or incapacity, as an affectation and as a figure question of the conventions and habits of perception
or shape. than knowledge per se. To speak of quality in
According to Aristotle, quality is that which architecture is to somehow grasp at its fleeting
distinguishes particular or individual branches of present suchness as a space/time phenomenon.
knowledge from other branches of knowledge. Quality is the shifting ground of this presence.
Quality has an identity with knowledge. Knowledge of
architecture is knowledge of its qualities. In this sense Derrida’s critique of the idea of category
architecture considered as a branch of knowledge is a In many ways, the idea of quality depends on the idea
quality. An expert has expertise about the knowledge of category. In an essay ‘The Supplement of the Copula:
they possess such as music. As the limits of disciplines Philosophy Before Linguistics’ Jacques Derrida writes a
break down in our time so does the idea of quality. lucid interpretation of Aristotle’s Categories.12
The adoption of a trans-disciplinary approach to Aristotle’s ten categories are seen as logical and
knowledge may be at odds with the pursuit of quality. metaphysical intermediaries standing between
The identity between knowledge and quality has been language and thought, between speaking and
neutralised. What becomes of quality when the philosophising and between experience and
individual branches of knowledge have been concept, hence the notion of ‘philosophy before
deconstructed? linguistics’. The category of being or its expression in

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everyday language as ‘to be’ or ‘is’ becomes for dark fear of a soulless but moving corpse like Musil’s
Derrida the category upon which all other categories ‘man without qualities’. The zombie in a horror film
depend. is an example of qualities’ absence and the deep fear
Derrida highlights the problem that situates the that we hold for the annihilation of quality in
categories as both empirical categories of everyday relation to a state of vital consciousness.
language and ontological architectonic categories of
thought. The fissure between the empirical and Kengo Kuma’s erasure of architecture
ontological is embedded in thinking categorically
and in thinking about the category quality. There is ‘I want to erase architecture […]’16
according to Derrida a dilemma in the very heart of (Kengo Kuma)
the idea of category that makes it a problem with no
solution. The architect Kengo Kuma wants to make
In one sense thought is reduced to language by architecture that is an anti-object. To achieve this
virtue of categories. A category such as quality is a Kuma dissipates as much as possible the boundary
logical shortcut that links thought and experience. that opaque walls provide. In making an anti-object
Derrida reminds us that Leibniz viewed Aristotle’s he erases the primary characteristic of architectural
categories as an empirical roster of metaphysical form (the substance of walls and pillars) and ‘[…]
models. Here the special character of the Greek embraces [architecture] as a sequence of human
language appears to make it susceptible to a experiences’.17 He sees the act of architecture not as
‘spontaneous metaphysics’ or might one say a an object but as an ‘experience and phenomenon’.18
natural metaphysics? For Derrida the function of the Kuma is deliberately distancing himself from the
verb ‘to be’, the category of categories, provides a work of Corbusier and Mies as he reads their work,
universal basis for language. When the substantive specifically in the attitude of architecture’s
verb ‘to be’ is not present, language cannot exist. If dominion over nature. He writes,
there is a possibility of language without quality and ‘Modernism aimed at achieving architectural
thought without quality – can there be architecture transparency, but its proponents could not avoid creating
without quality? buildings that are juxtaposed against the environment. Le
Corbusier’s structures are built of concrete, while the
When quality is absent: a brief introduction to the work transparency that Mies van der Rohe aimed at resulted in
of Kengo Kuma glass objects that confront nature. Transparency as I see it
is not merely visual continuity. It is a condition in which
‘Reality is quality, determinate being; consequently it the building and environment dissolve into one […]’19
contains the moment of the negative and it is through this Kuma’s Kiro-san Observatory located in Ehime
alone the determinate being that it is.’13 Prefecture, Japan was completed in 1994. It is an
extreme but characteristic example of his general
‘“Qualierung” or “Inqualierung”, an expression of Jacob approach of architectural erasure and dissolution [1,
Bohme’s,whose philosophy goes deep, but into a turbid 2]. The programme of the observatory provides a
depth, signifies the movement of a quality […] within itself in series of interconnected viewing platforms that turn
so far as it posits and establishes itself in a negative nature the experience back onto the observers. A hidden
(in its “Qual” or torment) from out of another – signifies in camera secretly records and presents back to visitors,
general the quality’s own internal unrest by which it in an underground room, their own acts of
produces and maintains itself in conflict.’14 observation. The observatory unnaturally observes
(Hegel, Science of Logic) them.
Deftly inserted within a slit cut into the crown of
For all the importance placed upon the idea of vegetation on a site poised near the sea, the
quality and its related ideas can a negative observatory is literally dug into the site like a bunker
architecture without quality be envisioned that we [3]. The building is a series of platforms and stairs
can still have consciousness of? Can there be, like a depressed into and at times slightly breaking the
potential employee, an architecture that is under ground plane. Exposed faces of architectural elements
qualified or over qualified? In this sense quality can such as walls that protrude above grade and the line
be the excess or shortfall of experience or empeiria. of the vegetation are minimised to the greatest extent
Given the potential pitfalls of an unquestioned possible [4]. In a sense the building has no elevations
reliance on quality, in which an over reliance on but only visible edges. It reads like a tabletop without
quality can readily become a destructive weapon to legs. The inhabitable portions of the building lay
aim at someone or something, what would underground further emphasising the erasure of
architecture without quality be like? On what basis architecture. Kuma avoids making elevations that
can it be judged? prominently protrude above the horizon.
This would be architecture that in its conception Kuma’s architecture is made through the sheer
assents to nature rather than resisting and digital preponderance of numeration, elements,
withstanding nature. It is architecture without a parts, pieces and their repetition. He wants to break
nature. Is architecture without quality still down or ‘crush’ the materials of architecture to the
architecture? Can we have consciousness of it? In level of particles to achieve a fusion with nature. He
some strange way architecture without quality calls this ‘particalizing’. This affect is generally
reminds one of a zombie.15 Zombies elicit within us a achieved by fabricating exterior walls that are more

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like open screens, membranes or a series of vertical of digital deletion, camouflage and mirage seeking
or horizontal louvres rather than solid walls [5]. to hide itself in situ. Wright’s Fallingwater does not
Kuma writes, ‘The most important aspects of disappear in the landscape but is perched above
architecture are not its plan, shape or elevation, but gathering the stream below like Heidegger’s bridge
the particles of which it is made up’.20 He emphasises that gathers the river that passes underneath it.21
the presence of the floor while de-materialising the Kuma is making buildings that are unapologetically
presence of the wall in the form of a membrane. By swallowed up by the surroundings like Jonah by the
this procedure architecture itself is dis-qualified and whale.
de-natured, environment replaces nature and There are important implications in Kuma’s work
architecture lies buried in absentia. about the voiding of nullifying place. One could
To his credit, Kuma’s deferral to and acceptance of speculate that if, for example, all the buildings in a
environment is not a blind following of ‘green particular city were designed by Kuma the city as a
architecture’ or ‘sustainable architecture’ but the place may cease to exist or be identifiable as a place.
end of architecture as the pursuit of quality. Kuma This would be a place without quality. Does
wants to erase architecture from the city or an architecture without quality create place without
isolated natural site like a mathematical subtraction. quality? Is the erasure of architecture also the
The image of architecture has been deleted from our erasure of place? Is the erasure of architecture the
mind and our imaginative landscape. The building erasure of the possibility of the topos of architecture?
becomes a rational deletion of the place of These are disconcerting questions and make one feel
architecture. Instead of building a whole a sinister aspect to the work of Kuma however
architecture he builds only a half. artfully and elegantly it is indeed made. The erasure
Kuma is not making a collage as in the work of of architecture is the elimination of the category of
Alvar Aalto where architecture is inserted in the place and our capacity as architects to represent a
manner of cut and paste. The work of Kuma is an act consciousness of place.

5 Great (bamboo)
Wall, Kengo Kuma &
Associates, Beijing,
China, 2002. Interior
view of bamboo
lounge, from Bognar,
5 p. 140

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Clark and Menefee’s architecture of eulogy and apology on a tabletop [8]. As Kuma plays down the importance
of elevation and plan and by association section, for
‘Architecture, whether as town or building, is the Clark and Menefee this house, and architecture in
reconciliation of ourselves with the natural land. At the general, are inconceivable without the unity of plan,
necessary juncture of culture and place, architecture seeks elevation and section rising up from the ground.
not only the minimal ruin of landscape but something more The plans are divided following a four square
difficult: a replacement of what was lost with something that arrangement providing an allotment of smaller and
atones for the loss. In the best architecture this replacement larger rooms following the servant and served model
is through the intensification of the place, where it emerges of Louis Kahn. Architecture becomes not the
no worse for human intervention, where culture’s shaping of adoration of the joint as in Kahn but rather the
the land to specific use results in a heightening of beauty and adoration of room and place. One could say that this
presence. In these places we seem worthy of existence.’22 is a house where the place seems to view the rooms,
(W. G. Clark, ‘Replacement’) and the experience of the house becomes one with
the place itself. Architecture becomes the making of
In shifting attention to the work of Clark and the best possible place. The house is literally and
Menefee, it is necessary to point out that the terms of figuratively a window to the presence of the qualities
engagement are dramatically different from that of of a place and the consciousness of inhabiting the
Kuma. The frame of reference of the criticism land.
changes from axiological to ontological. In Kuma’s There are four distinct elevations made all the
work we can gauge the absence of quality whereas in more present by the tower-like quality of the house.
the work of Clark and Menefee there is no way to The house reads as a stout inhabited hollowed out
measure the plentitude of quality. column with overscaled windows and openings in
The work and thought of the architects W. G. Clark the manner of Robert Venturi. The exaggerated
and Charles Menefee reads as a direct refutation of apertures heighten the sense of the tallness of what
Kuma’s position. It is an apologetic architecture with is in fact a relatively small house.
quality. An architect by virtue of the act of building is Partially blocking the front entry prominently
not necessarily destroying the land but is involved in stands a rotated solid chimneystack that seems to
an act of proportional and reciprocal replacement take up half of the front of the house and most of its
and atonement for the necessary violence to the land interior volume. An exterior stair protruding from
upon which architecture and the act of building and into the main volume of the house draws upon
create.23 The architect kills the land and the building is the history of building in Charleston and adds to the
an architectural apology for this destruction. The act sense of the modest monumentality and formality of
of building stands both as a romantic and sacrificial the house.
act relative to its foundational situation in the The visible chimney of the fireplace, in particular,
landscape and the provisional nature of our existence. strikes one as a foretelling of the house in ruins. In
To build is an act of forgiveness and remembrance. the event of a terrible storm, perhaps the chimney
Kuma no longer believes in architecture as Louis Kahn would be the only thing left still partially standing
believed, or as adopted by Clark and Menefee as an act on the site. The chimney and hearth especially in
of presencing atonement within a horizon that both ruin is the symbol of house marking the land and
eulogises and praises place. sky with the primordial smoke of its forgotten
existence. The Croffead House evokes the poignant
Architecture with quality in praise of place: the ephemerality of wind and smoke standing as a
Croffead House watchtower over the finite quality of our mortality.
The Croffead House (1986–89) by W. G. Clark and Here architecture seems so natural and as if it had
Charles Menefee is a visitation upon one’s own always been there. The house is not a bold refutation
mortality. The house is located on James Island, South of architecture as with the work of Kuma. Rather it
Carolina. It stands dramatically exposed at the end of embodies in the act of building a humble conjecture
a residential street on a flat point of land near the and meditation on the basic conditions and
confluence of two rivers on the outskirts of the city of enigmatic nature of our existence in praise of place
Charleston [6, 7]. The site can be buffeted by strong, in awe of nature [9].
persistent and unpredictable winds. At any moment
one feels simultaneously both a sense of serenity Conclusion: towards a natural architecture
while sitting in an Adirondack lawn chair in the side
yard and the necessity of moving to higher ground ‘Standing there the building rests on rocky ground. This
away from the rising waters of an onrushing torrent resting of the work draws up out of the rock the mystery of
of water and wind. The house is an embodiment of that rock’s clumsy yet spontaneous support. Standing there
the history of Charleston and what it means to the building holds its ground against the storm raging above
elegantly inhabit the land amid a brooding calamity.24 it and so first makes the storm itself manifest in its
It is within the context of this overwhelming violence.’25
mortality and provisionality of Charleston that the (Martin Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art)
house can be best appreciated. Where Kuma
camouflages his buildings dug under the vast The Croffead House makes an apologetic stand in the
curvature of the horizon of the earth, the Croffead face of the overwhelming provisionality and
House sits exposed on the land like an object placed mortality of our existence. This standing and more

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6 Croffead House, W. Site plan drawing Carolina, 1986–89.

G. Clark and Charles (partial) from Section drawing from
Menefee, James Richard Jensen, Jensen, p. 99
Island, South Clark and Menefee
Carolina, 1986–89. (New York: Princeton 9 Croffead House,
Front view. Architectural Press, W. G. Clark and
2000), pp. 92–93 Charles Menefee,
7 Croffead House, W. James Island,
G. Clark and Charles 8 Croffead House, South Carolina,
Menefee, James W. G. Clark and 1986–89. Side yard
Island, South Charles Menefee, with Adirondack
Carolina, 1986–89. James Island, South chairs.

6 8

7 9

precisely withstanding occurs amid the torrent of technical and less poetical terms than Heidegger, the
nature by the way the architect posits through the importance of the notion of architectural standing.
act and art of building the nature of architecture. This idea of standing is exemplified in one of the
This condition of withstanding is what is most terms of his famous triad – firmitas. This term has
natural and important about our conscious been variously translated as firmness, strength,
understanding of architecture. Heidegger reminds durability and soundness.26 Under the auspices of
us in his famous essay Building Dwelling Thinking that firmitas, architecture appears effortlessly to hold the
this standing is the techne that has been concealed in nature of nature at bay temporarily by withstanding.
the tectonics of architecture since ancient times. The act of building apologetically entails an
Vitruvius first detected, albeit in decidedly more acceptance and elevation of the elements of

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architecture in a Semperian sense. There is, to In continuing to allow the language of

borrow a phrase from Derrida, ‘an architecture of environmentalism to invade our thinking about and
architecture’. If the poet Rilke made words into making of architecture we may have inadvertently
things, an architect makes the elements of building, turned architecture into meteorology and the
such as walls and windows, into the quality we call architect into a meteorologist or climatologist. With
architecture. the unquestioned acceptance of the importance of
There is an important ethical choice that environment comes the oppressive ideas of
architects must make between environment and continuous monitoring, measurement, certification,
place. This is a primary lesson of the comparison of control and surveillance. The quality of place resists
the work of Kuma with Clark and Menefee despite measurement by instrumental means and cannot be
the vast and often incommensurable cultural detected on a radar screen. Place is made and can
differences between East and West. At the same time only poetically be understood. It is simply the
one must acknowledge that Kuma’s approach to conscious art of the way we elegantly acknowledge
architecture emerges as much from the Japanese the nature of our existence and being in the world.
tradition as it does from the post-industrial West. In an age obsessed with sustainability, ‘green
Today we talk globally and incessantly about architecture’ and more recently ‘low carbon
environment. There is environmental air quality, a architecture’, the call for a heightened consciousness
non-oppressive environment, environmental of the qualities of a natural architecture may seem
sensitivity and of our social climate in general. empty and nothing more than a vague backwards-
Environment has become something that we hold looking generalisation. If sustainability and the
someone accountable to both socially and politically. practice of architecture can be sustained this will
Sustainability is environment in disguise and it is require a significant mid-course correction back to
therefore subject to the same criticism. It is telling nature and quality. The real crisis of our time is our
that there is a federal agency in the United States incapacity to be natural.
called the Environmental Protection Agency. What does one mean by the phrase natural
Environment is the bureaucratisation of place and architecture? This would be architecture that is
place cannot withstand bureaucracy. Quality in the acutely aware of its own nature and its primary
sense of oversight of the environment has become quality of withstanding amid the provisional nature
the dominant mode, as for example, the burgeoning of our mortality. ‘Nature is the ancestor of all
LEEDS certification process in the United States ancestors and the mother of all mothers.’27 A natural
under the auspices of the Green Building Council. architecture would express a maternal and
There is and can never be a similar protection or authoritative consciousness of the ancestral and
management for place and no guarantee for its venerable standing at the threshold of mythos. These
sanctity. Place is and will always be the responsibility are the qualities of a natural architecture or
for being all too human. architecture as such.

Notes Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason in 1781 Selected Works (New York: Princeton
1. Peter Zumthor, Atmospheres (Basel: that the question of category Architectural Press, 2005), p. 14.
Birkhäuser, 2006), p. 11. reappeared in philosophy in a For additional information on the
2. William Fleming, The Vocabulary more transcendental form. Hegel architecture of Kengo Kuma see,
of Philosophy: Mental, Moral and took up some of these questions in Kengo Kuma, Geometries of Nature
Metaphysical (New York: Sheldon his Science of Logic (1812 and 1831). (Milan: l’Arca Edizione, 1999). For
& Company, 1867), pp. 109–13. For a more contemporary notion further information on the work
3. Oxford English Dictionary Online. of the idea of category in a of Kengo Kuma and W. G. Clark I
See entry on ‘quality’. linguistic and semiotic sense, see, would direct the reader to the
4. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Umberto Eco, Kant and the Platypus official web sites of Kengo Kuma
Cairns, The Collected Dialogues of (2000). Lastly I would refer the & Associates at < http://www.
Plato (Princeton, NJ: Princeton reader to Nelson Goodman’s kkaa.co.jp > and W. G. Clark
University Press), pp. 1176–77. dissertation A Study of Qualities Associates at < http://www.wgclark-
5. Hamilton, p. 886. (1941). architects.com >.
6. Hamilton, p. 886. 13. A. V. Miller, trans., Hegel’s Science 18. Bognar, p. 14.
7. Hamilton, p. 1177. of Logic (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: 19. Bognar, p. 17.
8. Hamilton, p. 1177. Humanities Press International, 20. Bognar, p. 17.
9. Richard McKeon, ed., The Basic 1969), p. 112. 21. For the general distinction
Works of Aristotle (New York: 14. A. V. Miller, p. 114. between a Western notion of
Random House, 1941), p. 23. 15. Robert Kirk, ‘Zombies’, in The gathering and an Eastern notion
10. Hamilton, p. 886. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy of realisation that is at the heart of
11. Oxford English Dictionary Online. (Winter 2006 Edition), Edward N. the tension in Kuma’s architecture,
12. Jacques Derrida, ‘The Supplement Zalta (ed.), see, Rabindranath Tagore, Sadhana:
of the Copula: Philosophy Before <http://plato.stanford.edu> The Realization of Life (New York: The
Linguistics’, in Margins of Philosophy, [accessed 18 July 2007]. Macmillian Company, 1915).
trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: The 16. This quote is taken from Kengo Reprint. For Heidegger’s notion
University of Chicago Press, 1982), Kuma’s web site , of gathering, see his essay ‘Building
pp. 175–205. After Aristotle’s logical <http://www.kkaa.co.jp> [accessed 1 Dwelling Thinking’ in Poetry,
work on categories it was not until July 2006]. Language, Thought, trans. Albert
the publication of Immanuel 17. Botond Bognar, Kengo Kuma: Hofstadter ( New York: Harper &

Frank H. Weiner Architecture as such

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 theory arq . vol 11 . no 3/4 . 2007 253

Row, 1971), p. 152. Acknowledgements Biography

22. See, W. G. Clark’s essay I would like to thank the organisers of Frank Weiner has taught in the
‘Replacement’, in Richard Jensen, the 2007 Quality conference at the School of Architecture + Design
Clark and Menefee (New York: Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff at Virginia Tech since 1987. His
Princeton Architectural Press, University for inviting me to research on the relationship between
2000), p. 10. formulate this essay. Virginia Tech architecture and philosophy has
23. Jensen, pp. 10–17. faculty members Prof. Michael been presented at conferences
24. For a general study of the O’Brien and Prof. Stephen Thompson around the world. In 2004 he
architecture of Charleston, South shared their insights about the ideas received first prize in the 2003–2005
Carolina, see, Jonathan H. Poston, of quality, consciousness, nature and European Association for
The Buildings of Charleston: A Guide to mythos. Blacksburg-based writer Vic Architectural Education competition
the City’s Architecture (Columbia, Moose generously shared his ideas for Writings on Architectural
South Carolina: University of South regarding a preliminary draft of this Education.
Carolina Press, 1997). paper. It is to him that I owe the
25. This quote is from Heidegger’s profound reminder about the Address
essay ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’ in importance of architecture in relation Professor Frank H. Weiner
David Krell, ed., Martin Heidegger: to the idea of withstanding. I would 201 Cowgill Hall
Basic Writings (New York: Harper & also like to thank my graduate School of Architecture + Design
Row, 1977), pp. 143–87. assistant Kashuo Bennett for reading a College of Architecture and Urban
26. For various English translations of draft of the essay and for securing the Studies
the Vitruvian term firmitas see, necessary permission for images. Virginia Polytechnic Institute and
Morgan (1914), Granger (1931), State University
Rowland and Howe (1999) and Illustration credits Blacksburg
McEwen (2003). arq gratefully acknowledges: Virginia 24061
27. Leo Strauss, Natural Right and l’Arca Edizioni, Milan, 1, 2, 3, USA
History (Chicago: University of Author, 6, 9 fweiner@vt.edu
Chicago Press, 1965), p. 92. Princeton Architectural Press, 4, 5, 7, 8

Architecture as such Frank H. Weiner

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