Architecture as Metaphor

As its name suggests, it is a book that cannot easily be placed into any of the classical disciplines. Yes, there is architecture as you know it in the book, but there is also linguistics, mathematics, and economics, and even an enjoyable philosophical tour from Plato to Kant, from Marx to Wittgenstein. The book's central concept is "architectural will." Karatani, looking from Japan, a country distant from the Western intellectual tradition, which he claims lacks such a will, sees at the root of the Western tradition Plato's prioritization of "making" over "becoming" - an attempt to create a "structure" that would eliminate indecision and uncertainty. He views the obsessive repetition of architecturally derived metaphors throughout the history of Western philosophy as the result of an "irrational" choice to re-establish order and structure within a seemingly chaotic "becoming." In this respect, Karatani's work can be included in deconstructionism. However, instead of stopping there, he places himself within the critical tradition initiated by Kant and continued in very different forms by Marx and Wittgenstein. This is because Karatani also, in one sense, affirms the will to create and build. Unlike the Romantics, he is not in favor of opposing "making" by affirming "becoming" - in fact, he argues that becoming is not chaotic but has a discernible form. According to Karatani, architecture - making, creating, building - is never merely the realization of a design as an idea, but "a perfect event in the sense that it is a making or becoming that transcends the maker's control." This is an extremely practical observation, directed at life and the contemporary world: it states that a monistic or pure design - and therefore a structure or system - independent of possible relationships with others who do not share the same common rules with us, is not possible.