Abstract:
Architectural phenomenology is that which is so oft en referred to as atmosphere, the poetics of our built fabric. It is that unexplainable grounding found in traversing the weighted air of an aged space. It is the mediator between humans and the existential world providing orientating horizons of anchorage and relativity. The force that separates the sterility of homogenised spatial volumes exponentially spreading across the globalised urban fabric and the existentially-fired solidity of a rich atmosphere. It is that which reveals, orientates, and replenishes the embodied phenomenological being of humans' existence. This is not a design methodology. This a way of thought. This is not a manner of approach. This is a way of seeing. This is not a schema of application. This is a way of orientation This is not knowledge. This is a sensitivity. Architectural phenomenology shallow in its immediacy, but which is receptive to the tracing of human experience and time, allows for the potential growth in mass and deepening of the existentially supportive and replenishing construct. The phenomenological sensitivity of the architect is that which produces works conducive in immediacy to the occurrence of subjective existential happenings, and critically the palimpsestuous deepening of this existential potentiality through time. The design of a Cistercian Monastery on Motuihe Island was a medium through which to explore the paradigm that the potential for subjective existential happenings may be enhanced by a phenomenological intuitive sensitivity of the architect. Architecture is that which humanises the vast expanse of infinite existence, and phenomenology is that which reveals our very being within the existential flesh.