Built upon Love ─ Architectural Longing After Ethics And Aesthetics

The forced polarity between form and function in considerations ofarchitecture--opposing art to social interests, ethics to poetic expression--obscures the deepconnections between ethical and poetical values in architectural tradition. Architecture has been,and must continue to be, writes Alberto Perez-Gomez, built upon love. Modernity has rightly rejectedpast architectural excesses, but, Perez-Gomez argues, the materialistic and technologicalalternatives it proposes do not answer satisfactorily the complex desire that defines humanity. Truearchitecture is concerned with far more than fashionable form, affordable homes, and sustainabledevelopment; it responds to a desire for an eloquent place to dwell--one that lovingly provides asense of order resonant with our dreams. In Built upon Love Perez-Gomez uncovers the relationshipbetween love and architecture in order to find the points of contact between poetics andethics--between the architect's wish to design a beautiful world and architecture's imperative toprovide a better place for society.Eros, as first imagined by the early lyric poets of classicalGreece, is the invisible force at the root of our capacity to create and comprehend the poeticimage. Perez-Gomez examines the nature of architectural form in the light of eros, seduction, andthe tradition of the poetic image in Western architecture. He charts the ethical dimension ofarchitecture, tracing the connections between philia--the love of friends that entails mutualresponsibility among equals--and architectural program. He explores the position of architecture atthe limits of language and discusses the analogical language of philia in modernist architecturaltheory. Finally, he uncovers connections between ethics and poetics, describing a contemporarypractice of architecture under the sign of love, incorporating both eros and philia.