Christian Norberg-Schulz
An earlier blog entry of mine, “Genealogy of Influence,” promised a series of posts about the architects and theorists who influenced my architectural world view. This is the latest post in the series.
Christian Norberg-Schulz (1926-2000) was a Norwegian architect, educator, and architectural theorist. Though he initially worked as an architect—being a member of PAGON (Progressive Architects Group Oslo Norway), with whom he designed several notable rowhouse projects in Oslo in a decidedly modernist style—he is best known for writing a series of highly influential books from 1965 onward about the phenomenology and psychology of place. His books are important to grasping the significance of meaning and experience to architecture, a concept that stood in contrast to the rationalism and prevalent anti-historicism of postwar modernism. He wrote about making and inhabiting places in the real world—places connected to history and community—in an accessible and compelling manner.
An understanding of the dominant ideas and beliefs within the architectural profession and the schools of architecture during the period when Norberg-Schulz first came to prominence is necessary to appreciate why his theories would prove so persuasive. They would find widespread acceptance at a time when architects had largely ignored the essential roles of meaning, memories, and emotion in architecture and place-making. His writings were very much part of the zeitgeist during the formative years of my education and would forever shape my approach to architecture.
A significant portion of Norberg-Schulz’s theories derived from the philosopher Martin Heidegger’s methods of interpreting the being of human existence. This was perhaps no more evident than in his book Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture, which was published in 1979, just prior to my 1980 arrival at the University of Oregon to study at the School of Architecture and Allied Arts. In Genius Loci, Norberg-Schulz translated Heidegger’s notions of “dwelling,” “gathering,” and “thing” into a study of place and meaning. More specifically, it is “the meanings which are gathered by a place” that provides the best understanding of genius loci.(1)
Norberg-Schulz spoke of the phenomena of places and the importance of recognizing how meaningful environments help you feel “at home.” He wrote about how the landscapes we regard as meaningful have accumulated mythologies about them, such as the differentiation of high places that belong to the earth and yet rise toward the sky and heaven above. Additionally, he used specific cities he was familiar with—Prague, Khartoum, and Rome—as concrete examples of the phenomenon of place.
He noted a defining aspect of Prague is how its urban spaces are focused on towers and spires, and how churches, town halls, and old house alike simultaneously hug the ground and aspire to reach the sky. Norberg-Schulz observed how Prague would become different over the centuries and yet remain the same, as new buildings adapted to what was there before.
The genius loci of Khartoum stems both from its geography and the fact it originated as three distinct settlements. Located at the confluence of the White Nile and the Blue Nile in Sudan, Norberg-Schulz remarked visitors cannot form a unified visual image of Khartoum, as its vast dimensions are tuned to the infinite expanse of the desert surrounding the city. Despite this indeterminate character, Norberg-Schulz saw order and meaning in Khartoum’s standing between Arabic-Islamic desert culture and the “magic world” of Africa proper, as well as its importance as an interior watershed distinct from other African regions related to the coasts—Khartoum thus being at the center of several worlds.
Norberg-Schulz likewise asserted that Rome is defined more by its rootedness in the surrounding landscape—the features of the campagna and Rome’s seven hills—than by its monumental grandiosity. The city originated within that landscape as a vernacular cluster of settlements, later becoming a more comprehensive totality comprised of separate urban foci (monuments, streets, and piazzas) loosely organized about a system of axes (the cardo and decumanus). Rome’s architecture, characterized by plasticity and heaviness, shapes and determines the properties and boundaries of the public realm.
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Norberg-Schulz believed one cannot describe place solely through analytic, scientific means. He argued exclusively objective and scientific approaches failed to provide people with the “existential foothold” necessary to meaningfully experience the environments they inhabit or use. Fundamentally, spaces where life occurs are places, and places are spaces with distinct character. Recognizing its genius loci requires reinforcing the larger order with each new intervention, continuing the existing pattern or structure, and embodying and expressing its essential spirit.
Importantly, Norberg-Schulz advocated for recovery from a loss of meaning and place during a period in architecture when settlement as a place in nature, when urban foci as places for everyday living, and when meaningful sub-places where one could feel both individuality and belonging, were not priorities. He restored the necessity of experiential considerations in design such that a building is not merely a building but a shared spatial experience—a locality—that embodies and shapes the values of its environment and culture.
I owe a debt to Christian Norberg-Schulz for helping me understand the concept of architectural phenomenology and for stressing the importance of experiential qualities in the design of our built places.
(1) According to Wikipedia, the term genius loci comes from classical Roman religion, being the ancient Romans’ protective spirit of a place. In contemporary usage, and thanks in large part to Christian Norberg-Schulz, genius loci refers to a location’s distinctive atmosphere.
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