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Making space for degenerate thinking: revaluing architecture with Friedrich Nietzsche

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 September 2021

Simon Weir
Affiliation:
simon.weir@sydney.edu.au
Glen Hill
Affiliation:
glen.hill@sydney.edu.au

Extract

Scholarly analysis of the writings on architecture of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) has largely focused on passages in Twilight of the Idols where he claims that ‘Architecture is a kind of eloquence of power in forms – now persuading, even flattering, now only commanding.’1 Yet, considering Nietzsche’s theory of the will-to-power – that an innate drive towards power, might, and self-overcoming is the dominant force of existence – architecture gets interpreted in this passage as he would likely have interpreted sculpture. Any recognition of the social, political, physical, and psychological accommodations of architecture are absent. However, in a passage in Joyful Wisdom entitled ‘Architecture for the Perceptive’, Nietzsche wrote of architecture as a carefully crafted space to inhabit. This discussion of architecture as a lived space has received considerably less attention.

Type
Theory
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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