The architectural cogitatio: a phenomenological critical realist contact for the ethico-political prognosis of the 21st century architecture theory

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2022-2
Eşingen Kınayoğlu, Günce
The thesis puts forward architecture as the perceptual object of its agency; and sees its totality as imagery derived from the contemporary discursive mechanisms at the turn of the millennium and the following two decades. Through the term cogitation from Latin philosophy, the study covers the status of architecture between phenomenological brackets by articulating its disciplinary sphere as an object of its own reflexivity. It proposes a framework to weave the present and emergent diagnostic positions to cast architecture theory for the 21st century. This thesis aims to re-establish the foundational supremacy of philosophy in architectural thinking, first by examining how the perception of architecture becomes the content of its own consciousness, and later, the emerging shifts in intellectual thought inclined architecture into turmoil, and finally, the reorientation of discipline towards political and moral discourse. The thesis diagnoses the status of architecture as lodged between predicament and resurgence, portrays an aporia where its agency is in puzzlement of how to proceed, and asserts an alethic endeavor that sustains an incomplete search for a valid ontological approach. It introduces the potential to recast architecture over the individualist parrhesiastic communication with oneself, constituting moral uprightness. Based on the significance of intentionality, the study brings the conceptual and metalinguistic tools of both phenomenology and critical realism into the architectural debate. Altogether, the thesis extends the contact area of critical realist metatheory and architecture theory to guide the philosophical account of contemporary architecture placed at the center of the politicization of critical discourse about the sociological and economic present.

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Citation Formats
G. Eşingen Kınayoğlu, “The architectural cogitatio: a phenomenological critical realist contact for the ethico-political prognosis of the 21st century architecture theory,” Ph.D. - Doctoral Program, Middle East Technical University, 2022.