If there was another way to think, how would you know about it?
So much of our world is defined by how we consider it, yet making substantive changes to how we consider the world is a process we rarely undertake. It seems that many of the institutions around us encourage one way of understanding over others, leaving other ways of knowing and being behind. Meanwhile, few would argue that there is only one way for humans to exist and think that is better than the rest.
More importantly, if other people think differently than you, how would you recognize it or acknowledge the difference? As social creatures, we frequently project our values, interests and preferences upon others until proven otherwise. While it might be easy for some of us to superficially understand that other people have different values and perspectives, understanding how deeply these values and perspectives shape how we perceive the world around us is a much more difficult task.
Here’s an example: You are the kind of person who loves dogs. You grew up with big, fat dogs that were affectionate and lovey, your existence with dogs was one of welcomed tummy scratches and wet, sloppy licks on your face. As a result, interacting with dogs is more likely to increase your oxytocin levels, the same bonding hormone that parents experience with newborn babies.
Now let’s flip that around: Let’s say you were bitten by a dog when you were three and you’ve never felt comfortable around them. When you are near a dog, even small ones, you feel a little tense; you get nervous. Dogs sense this fear, and are more likely to act aggressively to you because of it. Your brain learns to elevate your adrenaline levels when you even see a dog.
Which experience is right? Which one is wrong? Neither- they exist outside of any notion of “right” versus “wrong,” “correct” or “incorrect.” It is neither right nor wrong to have either oxytocin or adrenaline flood your brain when you encounter a dog; it simply is a product of your personal experience. More to the point, they are products of the context that you exist within, the world that you know. If you grew up around dogs that were trained for pit fighting, it would be entirely appropriate for you to be leery around them. If you grew up around dogs that were basically animate teddy bears, there might be little reason for you to be concerned. Neither response to either context would be wrong, they are just products of larger cultural conditions.
The example of dogs might be a little misleading here. The kinds of experiences we have with dogs can be extreme compared to other things we encounter. In the examples described before, dogs can be remarkably loving providers of affection or a very real threat to physical safety. There are few entities that can vary so widely for so much of the human population.
What is important here is how our way of being- our ontology- is framed by our experiences of the world and how it exists outside of this world. You might prefer coffee to tea, hip hop to classical, intuition to science- None of these preferences are right or wrong, but they might have varying levels of appropriateness in social contexts. Black metal might not be the music to play at your grandmother’s funeral (though it might be), much like intuition might not be the most helpful mode of engagement when solving a chemistry problem (though it might be). In these cases- as well as many, many others- the way we engage with the world around us is not a question of right or wrong as much as varying levels of insight to our contexts.
While it is true that some behavior can be judged as empirically wrong (criminal action, wreckless insensitivity, etc), the vast majority of behavior and action resists these kinds of judgments. Some might say that exercising is a better behavior than eating a Big Mac, but if the person eating the burger is starving then that judgment is somewhat misguided. If the person eating a Big Mac is just really hungry instead of starving, any discussion of appropriateness becomes more nuanced. If the person eats a Big Mac every day- particularly if there are other options- then questions of personal health, ecological footprint and others might arise.
What is vital is that this sense of appropriateness is contextual. The context where the action occurs determines how others might view how productive, healthy, or insightful a decision might be. Did your grandmother wear corpse paint every day and have a satanic altar in her living room? Then black metal music might be a remarkably appropriate choice to play at her funeral. Does the chemistry problem you are working on require creating novel zeolites, or other chemical structures that have not been synthesized yet? Then intuition might be a necessary aspect of your approach.
Understanding context- both physical and cultural context- is vital for practicing architects. We do not need to fully understand every culture or community we design for, nor is that goal possible. However we do need to be open to a variety of ways of existing within the world. At times this requires us to engage with very different ontological frameworks, developing an insight as to how a community might understand what a building is and how it is understood. Explaining a building through analytical methods to a community that is largely intuitive might not be as appropriate or as helpful as other methods, much like talking about the experiential aspects of a space to a client who thinks of their building analytically might not be of much help either. Understanding what communication tools might be most effective for different clients, stakeholders, community groups, subconsultants, contractors and planning offices is a critical capacity for practicing architecture effectively.
This understanding extends to more than just communication techniques, but it can inform the design methodologies we use as well. Designing a speculative office building as a sequence of ephemeral spaces might not be the best approach when there is a tight budget with specific programmatic requirements. Similarly, designing installation art to primarily maximize heating and cooling efficiency might not be as helpful as other approaches.
A critical component of developing this sense is you, the designer. You are part of the context in which you operate, just as much as every other element of your context. How you view the world, how you want to add to it, what you want to create within it comes from you. If you feel that a project needs a sense of beautiful elegance, it is vital that you respond to this instinct as much as any other criteria. If you feel that a project needs to celebrate all aspects of existence, including the dark and grotesque, you should ensure that your project does so. Your understanding of what is needed or desired is as much of a project as any other aspect.
These senses, these instincts of what architectures need to do, are reflections of our ontologies. How we exist within the world, how we view the world, how we know and understand the rest of the world can all be understood as parts of our ontological framework. We see the world through a particular lens, and others might share similar lenses but there are those whose perspectives might be more distinctive.
Much of how we exist within our world is reliant upon how we know and understand it. Epistemology, or how we understand the world around us, frequently informs our ontology, or how we exist within that world. Though considered discrete discussions, it is helpful here to consider them as part of the same discourse. Here, epistemology will be understood as an aspect of ontological discussion, and this book will use “ontology” to refer to both after this point.
Ontology has become particularly relevant in the last thirty years. Since Paul Crutzen popularized the notion of the Anthropocene, many have seized the opportunity to discuss how we exist within the world. The 1995 Nobel Prize winner for atmospheric chemistry, Crutzen suggested that humans have changed the chemical composition of the Earth enough to warrant its own geological epoch. Rather than living in the Holocene, for the last 200 to 500 years, Crutzen argues that humans have lived in the Anthropocene.
This revelation has presented questions regarding how modernity relates to the world around us, reigniting questions regarding perception and human exceptionalism. These discussions have sparked many excellent texts, particularly in philosophy, that have provided remarkable insight into modern ontology and epistemological practices. Unfortunately, many of these texts rely upon extensive philosophical discussions to present their insights. Though these texts and others are incredibly insightful within their own right, their content can be, at times, out of reach for many design students and can warrant significant preliminary discussion to frame the significance of their contributions. It is difficult to introduce philosophical discussions of perception without the introduction of Plato, Immanuel Kant and others, much less the remarkably prolific conversations that follow.
Here, the work of Bruno Latour is remarkably helpful. Latour discusses ontology that is more isolated and requires less context to frame its insight, his book We Have Never Been Modern can be read as an ontological discussion that operates outside of philosophy. Latour leverages the work of historians Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer to argue that Robert Boyle and Thomas Hobbes unwittingly created the ontology of the modern, a combination of two disparate epistemologies. Boyle’s invention of the scientific object and Hobbes’ invention of the political subject created these dual epistemologies, or ways of knowing, that frame modern ontology.
Boyle’s objectivity leverages the use of testimony by credible, trustworthy witnesses who observe the recreation of phenomena within laboratories. Hobbes’ subjectivity, the naked calculating citizens as Latour describes them, is a set of terms for analyzing human interests. Though aspects of our biology can be understood through forms of Boyle’s objectivity, only humans possess a capacity for political agency, positioning the human subject as distinct from all other entities. As Latour writes, “They have cut the Gordian Knot with a well-honed sword. The shaft is broken: on the left, they have put the knowledge of things; on the right, power and human politics.” By discussing ontology while largely avoiding philosophy, Latour effectively frames a discussion of how our ways of knowing frame our ways of being.
Perhaps what is even more helpful than the identification of two epistemologies, are Latour’s descriptions of how they collide and shatter one another. Latour writes that subjectivity and objectivity attempt to operate separately, but there are many things, systems and dynamics that overlap and blur this division. The issue is structural: “In practice, then, (Boyle & Hobbes) are situated within the old anthropological matrix; they divide up the capacities of things and people, and they do not yet establish any separation between a pure social force and a pure natural mechanism.” Many objects, systems and dynamics cannot be purely understood as either subjective or objective, and are described by Latour as hybrids between the two.
One such hybrid is the hole in the ozone layer, a condition that can neither be understood as a non-human chain of chemical reactions nor one that can be understood as produced only by human agency. To view ozone depletion as purely objective would identify the chemical effects that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) have upon the atmosphere without a capacity to limit their production and use. To view it as purely subjective would be to understand the need for legislative action, but without a capacity to identify what chemical production and use to legislate. It is neither pure social force nor pure natural mechanism.
Rather than introduce discussions of ontology through a philosophical lens, Latour’s pragmatic analysis of modernity’s dual epistemologies prompts discussions of how our knowledge systems affect the nature of our existence. Not only is Latour’s analysis remarkably efficient at effectively introducing these complex dynamics, but it does so in a way that questions them and encourages students to critically engage with them. Even more effective is Latour’s capacity to frame these knowledge systems as a uniquely western approach, not an empirical aspect of all of humanity but a specific cultural construct.
As Latour describes, “Native Americans were not mistaken when they accused the Whites of having forked tongues. By separating the relations of political power from the relations of scientific reasoning while continuing to shore up power with reason and reason with power, the moderns have always had two irons in the fire. They have become invincible. You think that thunder is a divinity? The modern critique will show that it is generated by mere physical mechanisms that have no influence over the progress of human affairs… You think that the spirits of the ancestors hold you forever to their laws? The modern critique will show you that you are hostage to yourselves and that the spiritual world is your own human- too human- construction.”
Indigenous scholars such as Sarah Hunt and Shawn Wilson further reinforce a plurality of ontologies by eloquently describing the tension they experience of inhabiting two themselves. Hunt and Wilson describe a dynamic of slipping between two worlds, as they constantly have to mediate their ethical obligations to acknowledge family while maintaining a western appearance of professionality. Hunt describes the tension of balancing these two ontologies with the simple experience of raising her hand at an academic conference. Wilson’s Research is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods is written in two voices, one as an academic text and the other as a fragmented letter to his sons. Hunt and Wilson reinforce Latour’s notion that we are hybrids ourselves, caught between categories and left somewhere in between.
The nature of how we exist frames how we design. How we know the world around us, particularly how and what we communicate to others during the design process, drives our design processes and methodologies. If we feel that a context is dangerous, we will design fortresses, with high, thick concrete walls. If we feel that a context is safe, walls will be glass and there will be little need for fences. How we view and know the world dictate how we design within the world.
Mario Carpo’s Alphabet and the Algorithm compares two design approaches that reflect two different ontologies. Carpo describes Leon Battista Alberti’s use of scaled, architectural drawings with Filippo Brunelleschi’s approach of on-site communication. Brunelleschi would communicate by crafting models from carved turnips, personally inspect every brick and stone, as well as the sand and lime for making mortar. Brunelleschi’s approach frames architecture as something that remains within the architect’s head until it is constructed, a process that requires direct communication and interaction.
Alberti’s approach, what Carpo calls the Alberti Paradigm, views architecture as something that can be understood through measured drawings. Alberti is credited with developing the method of architectural communication that is widely used today, where a design can be abstracted into sets of drawings that then can be read by others- with or without the architecture team present- and effectively understood.
These two approaches demonstrate more than just two different communication techniques, they are reflective of two different ontologies. Alberti and Brunelleschi have distinctly different ways of understanding a design concept, and architecture is radically different. To Alberti architecture is a geometric and material proposal, a series of measurements and proportions mixed with the physical characteristics of building materials. To Brunelleschi, architecture is something far more personal, a complex concept that needs to be communicated repeatedly through different media and modes to be effectively understood. This is to say nothing of how the builders themselves are viewed within these worlds- Brunelleschi positions himself as a master builder where he maintains a degree of control over the building process that Alberti does not share. Alberti’s approach suggests humility that defaults to a builder’s expertise.
Some of the most insightful descriptions on the relationship between design and ontology have come from those outside of architecture. ]Lucy Suchman’s descriptions of Trukese and European navigation, though offered as a point of entry to discussions of machine intelligence, provides remarkable insight to the relationship between how we think and how we design. In Plans and Situated Actions, Suchman compares the abstract, analytical planning of the European navigator with the more intuitive approach of the Trukese.
“The European navigator exemplifies the prevailing cognitive science model of purposeful action… While the Trukese navigator is hard pressed to tell us how he actually steers his course, the comparable account for the European seems to be already in hand, in the form of the very plan that is assumed to guide his actions. While the objective of the Trukese navigator is clear from the outset, his actual course is contingent on unique circumstances that he cannot anticipate in advance. The plan of the European, in contrast, is derived from universal principles of navigation, and is essentially independent of the exigencies of his particular situation… European culture favors abstract, analytic thinking, the ideal being to reason from general principles to particular instances. The Trukese, in contrast, having no such ideological commitments, learn a cumulative range of concrete, embodied responses, guided by the wisdom of memory and experience over years of actual voyages.”
Similarly juxtaposing two epistemologies, Brian Eno describes a similar difference in approach of thought relative to the production of Ghanese music. Eno worked as producer for the Talking Heads album Remain in Light which cited John Miller Chernoff’s African Rhythm and African Sensibility as an influence. Though the contrasts that Eno draws himself are fairly broad, students are invited to infer that his analysis is framed by Miller Chernoff’s descriptions of music production by the Dagomba and Southern Ewe in Ghana. Miller Chernoff suggests that the meaning of this music is one that resists abstraction, but is contingent upon participation. Though Miller Chernoff does not contrast the difference of approaches in the same way as Suchman, many students can draw from their own experiences to reach a similar comparison.
The discussions prompted by these texts open the space for writings that more specifically describe the relationship between ontology and architectural design. Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzky’s juxtaposition of a literal transparency and a phenomenological one can be read as grappling with similar juxtapositions of the analytical and the experiential. Jun’ichirō Tanizaki’s In Praise of Shadows is received as an attempt to deconstruct the culmination of decades of experience into a description of one’s intuitive sense of architectural space. Rather than understanding these works and others as normative or alternative, they are more received as insightful reflections of their ontological frameworks.
Rather than discuss the significance of architectural theory texts, students are invited to explore the complex relationships between ontology and the more discrete epistemologies suggested by them. Aaron Betsky’s Reading MVRDV observes an intense analytical response to building codes and contextual constraints, while Peter Zumthor’s Thinking Architecture reflects a deeply personal and intuitive approach to architectural production. Keller Easterling’s Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space suggests a more intuitive form of operating within the unknowability of infrastructure space, Nicholas de Monchaux describes Gordon Matta-Clark’s anti-architecture as an approach where the city is understood as a living body.
Historically, interactive architecture has maintained an interest in blurring the objective and the subjective that Latour describes. The emphasis on movement has provided interactive architectures with a physical agency that subverts simple subject and object distinctions. Early progenitors of adaptive architecture such as Cedric Price and Nicholas Negroponte have documented interests in producing an architecture with human-like subjectivity, an interest that is reflected by more contemporary architects like Philip Beesley. Behnaz Farahi’s adaptive garments and spaces can be read as increasing the subjectivity for marginalized demographics.
Understanding the relationship between ontology and design is a vital capacity for architects. Working with clients, design teams, sub-consultants and contractors, we will be frequently confronted with different value systems and world views. Understanding the ontological frameworks of those we work with- as well as our own- helps us see different opinions simply as design constraints and, more importantly, opportunities to further our design methodology and skills.