Chora 1: Intervals in the Philosophy of Architecture 

Edited by Alberto Pérez-Gómez and Stephen Parcell 
Montreal: Published for the History and Theory of Architecture Graduate Program, McGill University by McGill-Queen's University Press, 1994.

 

CHORA offers a space to meditate on the possibility of an architecture capable of respecting cultural differences and acknowledging the globalization of technological culture. Interdisciplinary by definition and reflecting various cultural concerns, its essays operate from within the discipline of architecture. Generated by personal questions of pressing concern for architecture and our culture, these radical explorations of form and content suggest alternatives for a more significant architectural practice. While the main philosophical framework for CHORA stems from phenomenology and hermeneutic ontology, the architectural pursuits in this collection can be placed in the broad context of European philosophy, which demands a fundamental redefinition of thought and action and a substantial rethinking of traditionally accepted values.

 

Monochrome drawing of naked people parting and running around on a beach barbecue.
Illustration of the origins of architecture according to Vitruvius. From Vitruvius, De architectura, trans. Cesare di Cesariano (1521)

 

Contents:

1. Chora:  The Space of Architectural Representation by Alberto Pérez-Gómez

2. The Measure of Expression: Physiognomy and Character in Lequeu's "Nouvelle Méthode" by Jean-François Bédard

3. Michelangelo: The Image of the Human Body, Artifice, and Architecture
by Helmut Klassen

4. Architecture as Site of Reception-Part I: Cuisine, Frontality, and the Infra-thin
by Donald Kunze

5. Fictional Cities by Graham Livesey

6. Instrumentality and the Organic Assistance of Looms by Indra Kagis McEwen

7. Space and Image in Andrei Tarkovsky's "Nostalgia": Notes on a Phenomenology of Architecture in Cinema by Juhani Pallasmaa

8. The Momentary Modern Magic of the Panorama by Stephen Parcell

9. The Building of a Horizon by Louise Pelletier

10. Anaesthetic Induction: An Excursion into the World of Visual Indifference
by Natalijia Subotincic

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