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page104from Building Ideas
While all four components are meant to be “presented”,
in the properly poetic activity of authentic dwelling, the discussion remains tantalizingly
vague about the practical application of these ideas in architecture. Where
Heidegger does become more specific is in his discussion of the definition of
place, which he sees as the initial task involved in the acts of building and
dwelling. On the other hand place is seen to be dependent on the articulation
of boundaries and edge-conditions-the boundary is not where something stops,
but where something actually “begins its presenting”8 – and at the same time,
places can be created through the intervention of a newly built object. He
illustrates this with the example of the bridge, which brings the river banks
into a new relationship, as it “causes” the banks to lie opposite to one
another and “gathers the earth as landscape around the stream”.9
These
ideas begin to suggest a role for architecture, in heightening our awareness of
the character of our surroundings, as did Heidegger’s earlier analyses in the
book Being and Time, where he considered the interpretation of items of
equipment. In the end, however, language retains its status as the privileged
medium or “house of being” and this view has caused much controversy ever since
Heidegger first presented the essay “Building, Dwelling, Thinking” as a
lecture. At the same conference, the Darmstadt Colloquium, which took place in
August 1951, Ortega y Gasset presented his paper (mentioned above) on pragmatic
fields. Their argument concerned the priority between action and contemplation,
or between existence and essence in the understanding of the nature of dwelling.
Ortega’s “project of life” had become a “project of though” in Heidegger’s
work, whereas the dialectical relationship between the two realms was still
undeveloped in either version. It was left to other philosophers to return to
this theme and to consider the specific role of bodily experience – to
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