An Ethics of a Functional Architecture

The topic of this paper is an investigation into how architecture may hold the capacity to recognize the reconciliation of man and his world; working from the premise that this is possible within a world view devoid of a transcendental mythos, and lacking a theological or cosmological apriori. Within this ‘mythless present’, we are faced with the paradox of modernism: man’s infinite ability for reason combined with the ultimate subjectivity of his experience. This Cartesian world of universal geometric space, inhabited by a thinking subject and material extension, has replaced qualitative place. At the core of this shift is an ambiguity between a traditional symbolic, based consciousness and a modern instrumental thinking, allowing for the illusion that the latter is a more perfect substitute for the former. As the poetical content of reality is indeterminate and vague, it is now replaced by an unambiguous and precise mathematical equivalent.