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Architectural anthropology is based on a new, comprehensive definition of architecture. It includes everything constructed by Homo sapiens sapiens and his predecessors. It is a theory of architecture dealing with architecture and buildings in the wider sense of constructive behavior and its effects on the human perception of environment and space (Egenter 1992).
There are four classes based on factual source materials:
(1) Subhuman architecture: nestbuilding behavior of higher apes.
(2) Semantic architecture: non-domestic buildings or buildings unrelated to the human body endowed with semantic, social, and ideological functions.
(3) Domestic architecture: buildings which offer space for protection of objects, animals, and humans.
(4) Sedentary architecture: higher, horizontally structured units assembling several elements of semantic and/or domestic architecture.
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ARCHITECTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY (method):
Architectural anthropology is based on a particular approach, focused inductively on objective sources. In its reconstructions it does not rely on the historical method, which it considers too speculative. Against the classical archaeological method it postulates that what was most relevant for cultural evolution was not made of durable material. Against history in the narrower sense, insofar as it deals with the early history of any culture, it maintains critically that the most important dimension of societies in the proto- and early historical phases - that is to say, what is generally called religion - is likely to be misinterpreted by means of historical (scholastic) retroprojections (Egenter 1992). It also contends that most interpretations of early texts show a very uncritical use of space concepts and thus legitimate an irrational condition of thought. Important studies, such as that of Kerschensteiner (1962) on the meaning of the term cosmos in ancient Greece, are not sufficiently taken into consideration. What the historians call world-creation-myth can often be traced back to the class of very locally limited settlement foundations (e.g., the Babylonian creation myth as foundation of a settlement, in Winckler 1906). Methodologically speaking, architectural anthropology is based on what the Vienna School calls structural history (Wernhardt 1981), which questions the epistemological value of history based on the sequence of dated findings. In contrast to the historical method, it emphasizes interdisciplinary methods like ethno-history, and ethno-archaeology, and ethno-prehistory, thus searching for meaningful structural contexts. Since architectural anthropology searches for patterns of constructive behavior rather than its remains, its focus is on the ethnographic evidence provided by traditional cultures which are still observable. Its goal is the systematic reconstruction of a constructive continuum, one which parallels the whole process of cultural evolution, including early phases of hominization, prehistory, history, and the present.
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ARCHITECTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY (method, versus method of the art historian):
If we speak scientifically of theories, there is an unshakable law which says that theories are only valid over a clearly defined field of basic observations (See Egenter 1992, The Mosaic of Endless Micro-theories and the Function of Macro-theories). In contrast to this the term theory is used very vaguely among architects and art historians. The main cause for these often blurred discussions consists in the fact, that the term architecture is based on aesthetics, e.g. to distinguish it from mere buildings. Thus, any definition is apriori based on value judgements. It can only be subjectively defined. Thus most theories in architecture reach only the level of what can be called the formation of opinion-clusters. In contrast to this, architectural anthropology defines the term architecture in the widest field, including all that is and was built or produced by constructive behavior in the widest sense. This wider definition makes us aware to what extent conventional architectural theories were exclusive. There is a tremendous amount of architectural phenomena which enters our view with this new definition (see architectural ethnology, semantic architecture, subhuman architecture). The most important point: if we consider architecture in the anthropologically wide sense of a phenomenon, we can scientifically describe it, discuss it, theorize it. We can replace the endless pseudo-theologically deductive discussions of beauty by inductive reseach into the origins of aesthetics (-> anthropology of aesthetics). We become aware of the virtuality of many theories, because we have now objective criteria about what architecture is.
Four papers in our website discuss these problems more in details -
- Ape-Architects: on Rykwert's Adam's House and the nestbuilding of the great apes
- The _Gottfried Semper Paradox_: that more than 100 years ago Semper was much more advanced than the art historians who interprete him today around the Semper archive (gta Zurich).
- The Historism of quantified Proportion contrasts the term in the art historian's view with an anthropological concept of proportion. Highly critical against Wittkower, the paper shows how the art historian rationalises architectural thought, definitely not in favour of a humane architecture.
- One of the poorest examples of the art historian's attempts into theory is Heinrich Wölfflin's search for basic terms of the history of art. Confronted with Friedrich Nietzsches superb double-rooted art theory (Apollonian/ Dionysian) we become aware that the tools of the art historian are fundamentally questionable for the description of art and architecture.
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