La Raison De L'augure - Marc Belderbos
Synopsys:
The Reason of the Augur.
The genius of ‘to architect’.
Three essays on the commencement.
Marc Belderbos
Éditions Architecturer.net
www.architecturer.net
marc.belderbos@architecturer.net
2024
Five volumes in a boxed set. 1065 pages.
ISBN 9789 4643 35316
Text in French.
Original Title: La Raison de l’Augure.
This book is available
at the quality booksshop Peinture-Fraiche at Brussels
This bookshop sends the book all over Europe for a modest price.
You find the book also
on amazon.fr here.
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The following text is a translation of the original French presentation,
which can be found in the same place as the French version on the site.
There always seems to be something lost in the translation.
For those who read French, it is better to read this original version.
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The work establishes
the thought
of the idea and the reason
of an architecture
considered as the
inaugural event
of the anthropic living being.
Hence the title
'The Reason of the Augur'.
The book simply deals with
the meaning of these words...
‘augur',... 'architecture'...,
their 'reason'...
The augur,
who is not the oracle,
was the revelation
of what might happen
in the future
of the one who consulted him.
And that from,
not a com-position of figures,
but a dis-position of matters
like the sound of the wind
in the tree of Dodone,
The arkhè
contained in the word archi-tecture,
which could also be arkhè-tecture,
is there to express
this inaugural authority.
Tekton
contained in the word archi-tecture,
comes from the Greek word tikto (τίκτω)
and has the simple inaugural meaning of
'to engender', 'to produce',
'to bring to the world'.
The work therefore deals with
architecture as
inaugural authority (arkhè-)
enabling
to bring to the World (tikto)
the anthropic living being.
Anthropic living being
as understood by
contemporary thought and science... :
The anthropic living being is
‘subject',
not existing a priori,
insufficient and not central to itself,
crossing of others,
or
subject of an unconscious
which may not even be his own...
‘Subject’ who,
by its a priori non-existence
its insufficiency and
its non-centrality to itself
is in constant desire of stance,
that is ‘dignity’.
‘Dignity’ which we know is for Alberti,
the essential reason for architecture.
‘Subject’ then, for which
this precise and necessary architecture
is inaugural
or is the inauguration
of his ‘birth’ as anthropic living being
‘Birth’ that bring him to the World
as anthropic living being.
World
which is no longer simply
the primary Real
where nothing is distinguished
but already Reality
that is, the place of the Symbolic.
(An essential distinction in the book
is the distinction
between the Real and the Reality).
This architecture is thus
-following the requirement
pronounced by A. Badiou-
the violent interval
between the Real and the Symbolic
which allows the subject
to stand outside the Real,
-immense impossible-,
and to come to adhere to a Symbolic
and then to live by it.
The work develops in extenso
a way of thinking this architecture
which can be summed up as follows:
Architecture
establishes
a step away from the Real
a dis-position of matter
- dis-position called space -
for the first well Being
(which is not the well-being)
of the living anthropic being
‘subject’
This work is therefore about
the commencement
of the anthropic living being,
and nothing more.
In fact, the book is subtitled :
‘Three essays on the commencement’.
*
The work,
in three tomes and five volumes
begins with two tomes of theory
followed by a three-volume work
which retraces the history in Occident
of the dis - position
of architectural matter
reported to
the dis - position
of the ‘matter’ of
anthropic living being
a step outside the Real,
for a first well Being
(which is not well-being)
in a World or a Reality.
These parallel stories
of the dis-position of matter
of both
architecture
and
of anthropic living beings
in fact constitute
the march of the idea of 'to architect'.
The main subtitle of the book
is therefore
‘The genius of 'to architect'’.
*
The first tome,
Resonance of Reason
or stripping the reason
deals at length with this theme
of 'the reason of architecture’
for the anthropic living being
or the better reason
that is this inaugural
anthropic well Being.
It is a long, slow stay
among the words of the commencement,
all elucidated in the intention
of the anthropic well Being
at the very commencement,
with no theoretical or philosophical
theoretical or philosophical a priori.
This volume consists about forty articles accompanied
by numerous appendices of precision.
The titles of the articles
signify in each case
an increase of
the field of understanding
of the reason of this architecture
for the anthropic well Being.
at his commencement....
The better reason.
Reason and the extent of well-being.
The constituent reason
The body as reason.
The initial reasons
The reason of what holds.
Science of the Real and distance from the Real.
The reason of distance.
The reason of the distant body.
The reason for the situation.
The reason for being someone
is to be somewhere.
The reason of the mirror.
The reason for being a subject.
A world without reason.
A Real without reason.
The reason of abs-traction.
The loss of reason.
Giving reason to the Real and and to sense.
The reason of sense
and
Reason for signification.
The reason of a clean slate.
The reason of the refuge
or the run-ins of reason.
The reason of what passes or
reason - ratio.
Reason and Real.
Oriented reason.
The first sedimented reason of the nomad.
Reason in the Real.
The reason of the gap.
Reason between extent and structure.
Reason in the Real and through the Real: geometry.
Reason, un-Real passage.
Being and passage are reason.
Being is the reason.
Reason imbued with the Real.
The reason of form.
Reason lets itself be made.
Reason at work.
Reason sub-stance.
Underlying reason.
The ultimate of reason that commence.
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The second tome,
STANCES À DIS-STANCES
or
the setting up of the commencement.
establishes,
through a lengthy exegesis
of an architectural drawing,
an approach
of what can be an architecture
that is there
to inaugurate
the anthropic well Being.
Architecture
that only means
and never goes beyond
the commencement.
As in the commencement
of poetry ...
made up of inaugural events,
stanzas
at good dis-stance (dis – stanzas)...
empty
welcoming in them
the elements of this poetry,
the architecture
of which this book is about
is made of
stanza’s at dis-stances.
(Whe could even say
‘stances’ at dis-stances)
The stanzas,
always first,
never alone,
but in dis-stances to the others,
are a commencement
outside the Real,
not yet World
but permitting it.
They are empty,
essentially empty of meaning.
And yet,
by their dis-stances,
they establish
a first structured extent
breaking
with the Real and Nature,
to be protect of them.
It's all there in this tome:
a long insistent progression
on this theme of the ‘inaugural’
going so far as to say
architecture is number
without more...
This volume consists of
some forty articles
and appendices.
starting with
‘’The soil’
then continuing with
‘what elevates itself'.
followed by,
‘The matter and structure
of what elevates itself’,
and 'the void as distance'.
Then
'The name that kills the Real'.
which tells us how to dismiss the Real
to make a World happen.
Then
a long return in small insistent steps
to the first place of words,
the stanzas and their dis-stances,
poetic distance.
...
Architecture and poetry.
Architectural stanzas.
Distance as passage.
Passage as aggregation.
Empty distance: poetic passage.
Followed by,
a return to
the stanzas in the initial drawing.
...
Voids, negatives of stanzas,
The stanzas, negatives of the voids,
Followed by,
the first matter.
The Real-Earth,
law and metonymy of architecture.
The Real-Earth
embodies distance
in geometry.
Architecture in matter.
underlying the notion
of y-identity without identity.
which
has perhaps
surrender to architecture.
The primary situation and
the physical commencements
of geometry.
culminating in an essential :
architecture is number
at
a step from the Real.
(‘au pas du Réel’ in French)
Finally, by a few more steps
Architecture can pronounced
as 'un-Real'
ending with
Logic,
Ethics,
and Aesthetics.
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The third volume,
in three volumes,
establish in thought
‘The unfolding of the commencement’
in its history.
It shows that
the architecture dealt with in this work
took place
at the same time and parallelly with
the thought
that the anthropic living being
had of his own 'being to the world’
a step out of the Real
at his commencement.
*
The Greeks decide that
the ‘I' becomes the first person
and at the same time
their main buildings
are constituted by
anthropomorphic 'columns
all like little 'I's
standing in openness
before the Real.....
And this was done
starting from a radical insufficiency
of the anthropic living being
requiring the Idea to live.
But the 'I',
taking the first place,
slowly leaves
its initial inadequacy
to arrive,
after a long journey
completely covered in the book,
to what we call Renaissance or Re-birth :
the anthropic living being
comes to think of himself as 'Man',
(Homme in French)
central to himself,
sufficient,
a priori capable of judging...,
capable of creating
sufficient space.
Sufficient space,
sufficient and closed Reality
obliterating the Real
where the interior is
in opposition to the outside,
where the finite is
in opposition to the infinite,
and its face
in opposition to its depth.
This works like a terror
aptly named 'Humanism’
with this '-ism
arrogant presumption,
where the Human thinks himself
central to himself
sufficient...
All this develops
in Baroque...
in Enlightenment...
....
and slowly leads
to romantic suffering
through all the Neo's
before finally revealing
a cataclysmic hyper-Humanism
Stalinist and Hitlerian
entirely
of composition of figures
and in no way
dis-position of matter.
Hyper-humanism,
cataclysmic hyper-realism
which of course has not accepted
what thought and science had clearly seen
(Schopenhauer, Freud, Cantor, Lacan, Laborit, Badiou...)
i.e. that
the Human did not exist a priori
that the anthropic living being
was not central to itself...
but that he was
subject.
Subject
of a place called the 'unconscious',
a place that was not only his own.
This subject was thus
the crossing of the others,
inherently insufficient and open,
where the interior is
in non-opposition to the outside,
where the finite is
in non-opposition to the infinite,
and its face (façade) is
in non-opposition to its depth.
Mies van der Rohe
reveals a hypothesis
on the space of this subject
in the Barcelona pavilion.
This architecture breaks with
the com-position of figures
to present
a dis-position of matters.
But this architecture is still
of massive materials
i.e. of
idealistic a priori primary substance.
In the end, it will be
some Japanese
who let
establish itself
the architecture
specific to this subject
non-central to itself.
These architects
come from this country,
Japan,
where
for the living anthropic beings,
subjects by the way
of an immense tradition,
‘to be part of the other’
in a kind of 'communism' of subjects
and being 'the crossing of the others
is primarily obvious.
These architects
present,
for this subject,
this Architecture
of dis-position of matters without mass
and only spaces,
of massless edges,
where the interior is
in non-opposition to the exterior,
where the finite is
in non-opposition to the infinite,
and the faces are
in non-opposition to depth.
*
All this, in this work,
is shown in detail
with all the moments in between
each time neatly summarised by
an idea of architectural form
as an interplay
between the Real, the dis - posed maters
and the living anthropic subject,
in such a way that
the whole thread appears,
from the Greeks to the present day,
of the history of architecture
inaugural
of the living anthropic subject.
*
Two important readers
gave us the strength to produce this book:
Jean Ladrière and Alain Badiou.
Here is what they said
Jean Ladrière :
"Marc Belderbos's thesis is
a work of rare originality
and exceptional speculative vigour.
It offers us an authentic theory of architecture,
which does not consist in
applying to architecture concepts borrowed
from other disciplines or from a priori philosophical views,
but in helping us to understand architecture starting from itself.
The interpretation developed by M. Belderbos is both
an identification of "what in architecture makes architecture"
and a perspective on the destiny of Western architecture,
from its Greek origins
to the forms it has taken in the works of the great contemporary designers.
It is also an understanding of architecture, in the very process of its self-constitution.
M. Belderbos applies a certain number of classical philosophical concepts,
such as reason, discourse, real,reality, identitý,
matter, form, logic and aesthetic ethics.
But he gives them an extremely personal interpretation,
according to the internal requirements of the development of his thinking.
One must unreservedly admire
the strength of thought
that enables him
to rigorously re-elaborate this entire conceptual apparatus
according to the strict coherence of his project,
and which also enables him to give it a systematic articulation
supported by astonishing creativity.
It must also be said that
the proposed interpretation of the history of Western architecture
makes a most interesting contribution
to the understanding of the historicitý characteristic of Western culture
and the destiny of reason.
Indeed, the first part of the book develops
the theoretical foundations of the relationship between architecture and reason.
M. Belderbos's thesis thus offers us
a genuine, self-consistent philosophy of architecture
that truly advances thought. "
Jean Ladrière.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Ladrière
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Alain Badiou
Dear Marc Belderbos...
A simple 'passage' through your enterprise
immediately establishes its remarkable character,
and I say this without waiting, and without exaggeration.
Whether it's (at random)
the inaugural distinction between use and ease,
or the complex judgement made about Le Corbusier,
or the centering of Kahn's thought,
I can tell you that your book gave me the feeling of being the first (to my knowledge)
to establish in thought the genius of architecture.
...
Thank you for showing me your way.
Alain Badiou
This letter from Alain Badiou obliged me.....