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A Phenomenology of the Genius Loci
This paper is inspired by the work of Christian Norberg-Schulz who has brought back the ancient notion of the genius loci or "spirit of place" into architecture. In his earlier works Intentions in Architecture (1963) and Existence, Space, and Architecture (1971), Norberg-Schulz had already thought and written about experiential and psychic notions such as "existential foothold" and "existential space," but it was not until 1979 that he began to make use of the notion genius loci. As I will try to show below, this concept is not only relevant for architecture but for ethnography and anthropological theory as well. But first let me recapitulate the ideas outlined in Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture (Norberg-Schulz 1980).
People strive to create meaningful existential spaces where they can get a foothold, where they can dwell. Norberg-Schulz has taken the concept of "dwelling" from Heidegger's essay "Building Dwelling Thinking" (1971) and has related it to the concept of genius loci as follows: "Man dwells when he can orientate himself within and identify himself with an environment, or, in short, when he experiences the environment as meaningful. Dwelling therefore implies something more than 'shelter.' It implies that the spaces where life occurs are 'places,' in the true sense of the word. A place is a space which has character. Since ancient times the genius loci, or 'spirit of place' has been recognized as the concrete reality man has to face and come to terms with in his daily life" (Norberg-Schulz 1980, 5).
Places are qualitative totalities where events "take place," where the different components relate to each other in a meaningful Gestalt, and where the whole is experienced as more than its constituent parts: "A place is therefore a qualitative, 'total' phenomenon, which we cannot reduce to any of its properties, such as spatial relationships, without losing its concrete nature out of sight" (1980, 8).
From here follows an interesting turn towards anthropology and a break with functionalism and international style in architecture: '"Taking place' is usually understood in a quantitative, 'functional' sense, with implications such as spatial distribution and dimensioning. But are not 'functions' inter-human and similar everywhere? Evidently not. 'Similar' functions, even the most basic ones such as sleeping...