Nold Egenter:

Architectural Anthropology,

Research-Series vol. 1:

The Present Relevance of the Primitive in Architecture

COVER TEXT

A provoking book, including the following research series.

Conventionally, architecture as a design discipline has not engaged in scientific research. Architectural theory was left to the art historian, who bases his science on aesthetic principles and thus distinguishes 'high architecture' from mere buildings. This sounds rather like a zoologist who would only care for beautiful animals. This fundamentally aesthetic philosophy prevented the scientific definition of what in fact falls within the field of competence of architectural theory. Object research was prejudiced in advance. Although, as human beings, architecture concerns us all today, no attempt has been made so far to define it scientifically in its anthropological dimensions. The present research series describes architecture as a constructive continuum, that is to say as a new type of object culture running parallel to the whole of human cultural evolution. On this basis the theory of architecture, taken as "macro-theory", provides us with new insights into the meaning of architecture. At the same time it offers new suggestions for integrating many conventional micro-theories within a wider framework of constructive evolution: man will then have built himself and his ideas of the world. Architectural anthropology should therefore be of interest to all disciplines of cultural research.

See Contents vols. 1-8 (vol 1)
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