January 31, 2006

Ingold’s “dwelling perspective”

Animals build and humans dwell. Ingold inverts the argument that building was a necessity and instead used Heidegger’s notion of ‘dwelling’ to propose that we build architecture because we dwell.

We dwell, therefore we build.

A “house” is as much an exoskeleton for humans as a shell is for a mollusk. So what really distinguishes human constructions from that of animals?

Perhaps if the word "dwell" was replaced with “live” the concept made a bit more sense. We cannot argue that “we build because we live” but it could be said that “we live because we build”.

Building is not only the transformation of raw materials into cultural products or the imposition of a pre-formulated mental template onto a ‘blank’ (landscape) surface. People don’t just map their thoughts on the world. It is because we dwell (live) in the world that gives rise to building. Building is a process; a continual interaction between thoughts, people, resources, and the environment. The form of architecture emerges from embodied, learned and repeated practices and social activities.

Is process the difference between building and dwelling?

Building is the product and dwelling is the process?

Process is memory (intentionality?) and temporality. Is this process what separated humans from the non-human world? Or is all of this just too subjective?

The dwelling perspective supports the notion that “houses build people” if ‘houses’ can be extended to include landscape, environment or the physical space where humans are socialized.

The dwelling perspective seems to be situated somewhere between humans imposing their views on nature and the environment imposing its form on humans.