Architecture as Thriving - In search of "the Quality without a Name"

Abstract

This article explores the everyday use of architectural objects, conceiving the purpose of architecture to be the support of everyday wellbeing of thriving. The approach combines Batesons concept of meta-communication with Scrutons Wittgenstein-based architectural aesthetics. To describe architecture as an act of thriving is to propose that everyday architecture makes it possible for its users to enunciate their experience of the fluency of their shared occupancy of the architecture that constitutes their surroundings. Thriving is thus defined as a socially habituated and mostly unconscious and non-verbalized quality without a name (to borrow Alexanders notion). We examine the empirical implications of this theoretical argument by exploring the practices of residents in a newly built apartment block in the inner city of Helsinki, Finland. The empirical research uses autoethnography and observations, photographs, interviews, social media discussion, and planning and design documents as its primary methodology and sources of data.