Abstract

Our built environment suggests the future of substantial architectural practice depends upon subsequent generations of practitioners becoming concerned with the poetic dimension in the things they create; meaning that is sensual, bound to experience and capable of inspiring wonder. Becoming concerned with the quality of our creations is one of the most necessary factors concerning the survival of the architectural discipline and significant cultural revival. The pedagogical charge of inspiring future architects to create places that instigate life’s action, which inspire meaningful and imaginative engagement, is a formidable task in a world of easily applied abstract methodologies that may reflect an underlying connection between positivism and our own constructed consciousness. Is a ‘doubt’ of our own personal exploration and experiential interpretation, in favor of formulaic ‘certainty’ consistent with Descartes philosophical ponderings? Is this conceptualization directly responsible for the compounding reductionism felt in our approaches to the world? Phenomenological inquiry provides a vital critique of this philosophical inheritance while proposing approaches that can enhance perceptual participation; narrowing the gap between what the mind is trained to think and what is perceptible in design. Inspired directly by Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Alberto Perez-Gomez this essay seeks to provide an alternative to the reductive tendencies posed by positivism prevalent in many of our current applications.