BUILDING DWELLING THINKING
In what follows we shall try to think
about dwelling and building. This thinking about building does not presume to
discover architectural ideas, let alone to give rules for building. This
venture in thought does not view building as an art or as a technique of
construction; rather it traces building back into that domain to which
everything that is belongs. We ask:
1. What is it to dwell?
2. How does building belong to dwelling?
I
We attain to dwelling, so it seems, only
by means of building. The latter, building, has the former, dwelling, as its
goal. Still, not every building is a dwelling. Bridges and hangars, stadiums
and power stations are buildings but not dwellings; railway stations and
highways, dams and market halls are built, but they are not dwelling places.
Even so, these buildings are in the domain of our dwelling. That domain extends
over these buildings and yet is not limited to the dwelling place. The truck
driver is at home on the highway, but he does not have his shelter there; the
working woman is at home in the spinning mill, but does not have her dwelling
place there; the chief engineer is at home in the power station, but he does
not dwell there. These buildings house man. He inhabits them and yet does not
dwell in them, when to dwell means merely that we take shelter in them. In
today's housing shortage even this much
is reassuring and to the good;
residential buildings do indeed provide shelter; today's houses may even be
well planned, easy to keep, attractively cheap, open to air, light, and sun,
but—do the houses in themselves hold any guarantee that dwelling occurs in
them?
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