Abstract

A typical reference for the unity of thinking and making in architecture is the original notion of techne as poiesis, techne as aletheia, where a collective significance concretizes itself in the object through its making. The object made carries the conditions of such significance as its making is handed down by an effective tradition in the continuity of a life practice. In this original notion of techne as poiesis, the thinking of the object to be made is also thinking in a context of meaning which is defined within a tradition of making of certain type of objects in the unity of culture as a whole. Hence, making the object is thinking a significance and vice versa, in a broader hermeneutic universe that unifies a culture. This paper argues that the reference to poiesis in order to recognize architectural making as a way of thinking, or the unity of thinking and making in architecture, issues from a misreading of the phenomenological and hermeneutic schools in continental philosophy, and cannot fully account for the problem of form making in architecture as a constructive projection. The study visits the notions of architectural image and design process, and articulates a conceptual space for understanding architectural form as a spatial and tectonic unity that performs in the event space of life beyond the questions of representation internal to the notion of poiesis.