ABSTRACT
There are several senses in which one can understand what may be termed the ‘vocation’ of architecture. In this paper, however, I would like to focus on a sense of vocation that is arguably as fundamental as it can be – in fact, primordial – as far as architecture is concerned. This vocation can be, and often is, overlooked, or ignored by many architects, but at their peril (and that of those who occupy these buildings). What I am talking about is what Heidegger evocatively named the ‘fourfold’ of earth, sky, mortals and divinities, which is further intimately connected to and informed by the ‘life-giving struggle’ that Heidegger perceives in the relationship between the constituent elements of a work of art, or what he terms ‘world’ and ‘earth’. The aim is to draw out the implications of these concepts, considered as a primordial ‘vocation’, for architecture. To enhance understanding of Heidegger’s fruitful heuristic, the paper draws on Lefebvre’s (compatible) tripartite conceptualization of social space as well as on Harries’s illuminating elaboration on Heidegger’s notion of the ‘fourfold’.
Keywords: Architecture, Earth, Fourfold, Heidegger, Space.