Material Studies as the Possible Channel to Re-Connect Dwelling and Building

When discussing Emily Dickinson’s sense of dwelling, one cannot help but relate it to Heidegger’s proposition of dwelling. While Dickinson emphasizes thepossibilities of life, this symposia essentially proposes dwelling in a Heideggerian sense. The relation between both ideas plays an important role in achieving in the realm of the material dwelling equal possibilities in the realm of the mind. Heidegger proposed that “dwelling” is the evidence of human existence, and that “building is really dwelling” through which it is humanity’s very act of being. While adwelling’s fundamental character is to spare and to preserve, arguing that “dwelling in (im)possibilities” truly asks a fundamental question of a building as both an object and an act, materially constructed and accomplished in the present time. It asks whether it is (im)possible that the act of building and the building itself still retain the character and role of preserving the primal fourfold of humanity’s existence through the materiality of a constructed building.This paper proposes a channel of possibilities to answer these questions through material studies with insights and knowledge in the realm of (building) construction, since it is through materials that a building is made possible to come into existence as a signifier of humankind. Material studies provide the possibilities for delivering the estranged conceptual dwelling into communion with the physical realities of modern humanity, reuniting it to the building.

Building in the present; Communion of dwelling and building; Dickinson’s dwelling; Heidegger’s dwelling; Material studies

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