Transgressions and Inhabitations: Wittgensteinian Spatial Practices between Architecture and Philosophy Author(s): Nana Last Source: Assemblage,

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1. Maurizio Nannucci, Does this image fill your concept of philosophy? 1995, detail

Nana

Last

and Transgressions Inhabitations:

Spatial Wittgensteinian
Practices

between
and

Architecture

Philosophy
in the NanaLastis a Ph.D. candidate Criticism of and Art, Theory, History, and UrbanFormat the Architecture, Institute of Technology. Massachusetts year period beginning in the During a two-and-a-half autumn of 1926, the Austrianborn philosopherLudwig Wittgensteindesigned and built a house in Vienna for his The history sisterMargaretheStonborough-Wittgenstein. of the house's production - designed as it is by a philosopher who is nearlyas known for his dramaticentry,departure, and returnto philosophyas for his philosophical work - challenges the viewer to decipher within its walls some affinitybetween Wittgenstein'sarchitectureand his philosophy. In responseto this situation,most of the discussions of the house attemptto define some such link. The association,however,remainsstrained,based in two largely separateapproaches:the discussionof the architecture,on the one hand, and the discussion of the philosophy,on the ends up other. What seemingly demands interdisciplinarity reinforcinga sort of bidisciplinarity. association in Delving into the philosophy-architecture Wittgenstein'swork requireslooking beyond ways in which the philosophy is legible within the architecture.It necessitates a reciprocal spatial maneuver that shifts the site of study from within the walls of the house to encomAssemblage 35: 36-47 ? 1998 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

pass the pages of the text. This shift accomplishes two things: it revealsthe primordialrole of spatial and visual thinking in Wittgenstein'sphilosophy and it allows the
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assemblage 35

practice of architectureto be considered an integralcomponent ratherthan an isolated digressionof his philosophical development. Wittgenstein'sunderstandingof philosophy itself mediates between these two disciplines. In contrastto the belief that epistemology and metaphysics should be the center of the philosopher'sconcern, Wittgenstein viewed philosophy as lacking its own subject matter, a position that leaves epistemology and metaphysicsboth empty and bankrupt.Againstthis, he has stated, though not developed, the idea that aesthetics and ethics have content and thereforeare productiveareasof concern. two main texts,Tractatus Wittgenstein's Logico-Philosophicus in 1922 and published PhilosophicalInvestigations published in 1953, two yearsafterhis death, suggestverydifferentrelations between philosophyand architecture.In both texts, Wittgensteinwas concerned with the scope and limits of language, but what he believed languagecapable of sensibly from one to the other. communicatingchanged drastically The Tractatus had attemptedto define the limits of "what cannot be thoughtby workingoutwards throughwhat can be of bounds the thinkableor saythe thought"(4.114). Beyond able was that which could only be shown. Effectively,this territory, casting thinkingsubdividedphilosophy'straditional aestheticsand ethics out into the realm of showingand pracheld the privilegedposition of tice. Logic in the Tractatus connecting sayingand showingand therebyallowing language to representthe world. The Investigationsremoved the limits that the Tractatus had imposed on language and philosophy by rejecting the view that language representsthe world in acTractatus's cordance with the rules of logic. Instead,Wittgenstein saw that the propertaskof philosophy was to reconnect the philosophical study of language with the everydaypractice of language. As he stated in the Investigations,"Whatwe do is to bring wordsback from their metaphysicalto their

116). As a result, the representativefunceverydayuse" (4J tion of logic lost its centralityand the everydaypractice of language replaced logic as the model for philosophical thinking. This reconceptualizationof both language and philosophy exposed the Tractatus'sthinking as idealized and problematic. Ethics and aesthetics, although still undiscussed, were no longer defined as outside the realm of the sayable;rather,their realm of practice became the philosophical basis for studyinglanguage. While the subtitle of this paper, "WittgensteinianSpatial Practicesbetween Architectureand Philosophy,"speaksof a possible mediation between architectureand philosophy, it might also be understoodas an oscillation between the two disciplines. As Wittgenstein'slife and workwere themselves structuredby a series of breaksand shifts followed by subsequent returnsand reengagements - with people, places, ideas, practices, and disciplines - location and relocation came to lie at the very heart of his attemptsto position the subject in relation to philosophy and philosophy in relation to other disciplines and everydaylife. These practices also define the orderof the Investigations,which Wittgenstein described in the preface to the book as "reof which there is sometimes a marks" or "shortparagraphs, fairlylong chain about the same subject"and sometimes sudden changes from one topic to another. This, Wittgenstein explained, is "connected with the very nature of the investigation"that "compels us to travelover a wide field of thought criss-crossin every direction." The resultingmultitude of associationstakestwo forms.The first,which I discuss elsewhere, are what I call "imagesof entanglement"and involve sites in Wittgenstein'swork both texturaland architectural- where the enmeshment of these associationsemerge through a specific image. Examples of this include Wittgenstein'sdefinition of language as a labyrinthof paths, his discussion of the philosopher's
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Last

involvement with philosophical problems as the attemptto repaira torn spider'sweb with one's fingers,his description that of meaning as akin to the intertwiningof characteristics produce a family resemblance, and the orderingof the Investigationsitself, with its interwovenconcepts and interrupting interlocutor.These moments of consolidation are punctuated by Wittgenstein'sconceptual, textual, and historical movements. Chronicling these movements forms the and second of his approaches,and it is these "transgressions that are the focus here. These two approaches inhabitations" - the snapshot-like images of entanglementand the journaland like chronicling of the ins and outs of the transgressions inhabitationsthat define the later work - emerged together from within the central space within the sole workof architecture Wittgenstein designed. Wittgenstein'sinvolvement with philosophy is a complex issue to trace. While still studying at Cambridge University with BertrandRussell and G. E. Moore, Wittgenstein continually searched for a site to supporthis work. Ultimately, he decided on a remote village in Norway to provide him with the solitude that he craved. Several months later, following the outbreakof World War I, he voluntarilyreturned to Austriato enlist in the army as a soldier. Once there, he insisted on being sent to the front where he was eventually captured, spending ten months as a prisonerof war in Italy.The Tractatuswas completed in 1918 while Wittgenstein was in the army and afterhe had had only a seven-yearassociation with philosophy. With it Wittgenstein declared all philosophical problems solved and his involvement with philosophy over. Believing no work remained in the discipline, following the end of the war he abandoned both philosophy and his family wealth for what he thought of as a "completely unpretentious vocation." He then entered the Teacher's Training College in Vienna to pursue a career as a grammarschool teacher. With the course completed, he took a position for the summer as an

assistantgardenerin a seminaryoutside of Vienna before spending the period from 1920 until the spring of 1926 teaching in firstone and then another Austrianvillage primaryschool. In almost an act of symmetry,Wittgenstein returned to Vienna and again workedas an assistantgardener until October 1926, when, at his sister'ssuggestion, he joined the architect Paul Engelmann on the design of her house, quickly taking over the project. In January1929, immediately following the completion of the house, Wittgenstein returnedto Cambridge and to philosophy. In a letter that he wrote at the time to Moritz Schlick, the philosopher of the Vienna Circle, he expressed his desire to remain in Cambridge "fora few terms and work on visual space [Gesichtsraum] and other things."Alnot did explicitly workon these topics, though Wittgenstein they are implicit within his study of the philosophy of language. His involvement with problems of vision and space are inseparablefrom his investigationof language, as the philosophical problems Wittgenstein focused on were already spatialones, involving, for example, the mediation between the subject's interiorityand the publicness of language as well as his concern with the scope and limits of language itself. Architectureprovidedboth startingpoint and final impetus for Wittgenstein'sso-called later work,the site of his interests in visual space. His architectureis not, however, coincident with the house he designed, but must be understood within his engagement with the practice of architecture. Through the workon the house, in the literalization,manifestation, and materializationof the architecturalprocess, both spatialityand language became concretized and, in the later philosophy, reemergedtransformed. Through architecture, Wittgensteinfound a way to overcome the idealized solipsism of the Tractatusso as to reintegrateboth the subject and the practice of philosophy with the wider culture.
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assemblage 35

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The Stonborough house is often associatedwith its austere exteriorimage of asymmetricallygrouped cubic white blocks with regularvertical windows. This image of the house has been taken to parallel the seemingly similar austerityand precision of the writing of the Tractatus.Both of these are what I define as the view from without. I want to contrastthis image with one from the interior,with the view from within, the scene of inhabitation.The central hall of the house is a scene of quiet conflict in which the idealized pictorial view of language presented in the Tractatusis forced to confront the spatialpractice of architecture. The hall remains poised between the simplicity and austerityof the exteriorand an almost mazelike series of reflections formed by the paired glass-and-steeldoors erupting from all sides and defining the movement through the hall as that between the practices of vision and of space. The central hall contains a series of six paired glass-andsteel doors that lead into the house from the main entry, out to the southwest terrace, the dining room, the living room, and to the staircaseand upper floors beyond. Because of the climate, double exteriorwindows were a necessaryand common practice in Austria.But Wittgenstein extended this idea to the interior.With the exception of the doors to the breakfastroom, and those connecting vestibule and hall, all of the glass-and-steeldoors in the interiorare bipaneled, double doors that alwaysopen out into the rooms in both directions. The doors have metal frames with one vertical division in each glass panel and no horizontal divisions, except for the doors connecting vestibule and hall, which are not subdivided. The hall also contains a pair of plain metal bipaneled doors leading to the salon. On the exterior,where these double glass-and-steeldoors occur, the two sides contain the same transparent glass, but in the interior,this is not alwaysthe case. While the mediation between interiorand exterioris equalized and conven-

tionalized, the complexity of relationson the interior destroysthis singularityof approach.While the doors connecting the living room and hall repeat the exterior condition, those between dining room and hall and staircase and hall differentiatebetween the two sides. Each of these doors are clear glass on the hall side and translucent glass on the other, thus allowing for varyingdegrees of separation and privacyprovidedby both the visual coding and the restrictionof vision depending on which panels are open and which closed. A similar situation occurs with the double doors leading from the salon to MargaretheStonborough's privateliving room. The twist here is that all of the interiordoors leading to the salon are plain metal, so that these doors combine not two types of glass to create the transparent/translucent pairing, but glass and metal to form a transparent/opaque combination. In each of these cases, the less transparent materialis on the more privateside and the more transparent on the public side of the doors.This producestwo curiousreversals of association. In the dining room the doorsto the hall are on the same wall as threesimilarsets of pairedglass-and-steel doorsthat lead directlyoutsideto the southwestterrace.This situation createsa dilemma as to whetherthe dining room to hall doors should exactlymatch the other threesets along the same wall, as they do in size and detail, or whetherthey should also markwhat is on their otherside. To which room and which wall do the doorsbelong?What boundariesdo they define? The connection between salon and privateliving room illustratesfurtherthe kind of boundaryclashes Wittgensteinwas faced with in the design of the house. As with the dining room-hall connection, the doors in question occur along a plane that also contains exteriordoors.While the sets of paired doorsleading out to the terraceare of clear glass, the interiordoors connecting hall and salon and salon and family living room are of plain metal. The connection between

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assemblage

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salon and privateliving room thus had to navigatea series of three conflicting rules:the continuation of the glass doors along the wall, the placing of the more opaque materialon the more privateside, and the fashioningof all interiordoors to the salon, and only to the salon, from plain metal. All of these cannot be satisfiedat once. Instead,Wittgensteinopted to place metal on the salon side and clear glass on the private living room side. This allows the metal doors to remain solely associatedwith the salon but it disruptsthe series of glass doorsalong the same wall and leaves the privateliving material. space with the more transparent My point in this discussion of rules and their accompanying and almost endless list of exceptions is that what startswith an apparentsingularand repeated image gives way to a multitude of possibilities arising from the specifics of site and the demands of use. What begins as an attempt for absolute clarityand differentiationultimately yields a series of functioning ambiguities. This series of doors functions in several other ways to break down the absolute correlationof place, element, and meaning. The conflicting reflections by each in the other creates a visual-spatialcollapse. When looked at directly, the two layerscomposing a pair of the double doors coincide so that the front metal frame completely obscures the frame beyond. Moving off to one side disruptsthe singular image to reveal a double image emerging as a spatial dislocation. The importance of this - and of related circumstances that rely on the visual alignment of architecturalelements in space - lies in their ability to reveal their dependence on a fixed observer.Movement through space destroysthe singular, fixed image and reveals it as an idealized condition that gives way to the vicissitudes of movement and space. In contrastto the fixityof the Tractatus's collapse of language and logic, in the Investigations, Wittgensteinassociated movement throughspace with everyday language. He wrote:

The morenarrowly we examineactuallanguage, the sharper becomesthe conflictbetweenit and our requirement. (Forthe of logic was,of course,not a resultof investigacrystalline purity tion:it wasa requirement.) The conflictbecomesintolerable; the requirement is now in dangerof becomingempty.- We havegot on to slippery ice wherethereis no frictionand so in a certainsensethe conditions are ideal,but also, justbecauseof that,we areunableto walk.We wantto walk:so we need friction. Backto the roughground!(?1107) Similar spatial issues occur with the location and alignment of the floor joints (the floor was composed of a poured artificialstone that allowed for subdivisionsin nearly unlimited ways),the location of window and door openings on inside and out, the localized symmetrywithin the asymmetricplan, as well as with conditions involving lighting, materials,the variousmechanical systems,and so on. In contrastto what Wittgenstein had to say about philosophical problems in the Tractatus,these problems do not dissolve through analysisbut arise from it. Additionally,these issues must navigatethe move from a two-dimensional set of drawingsto the three-dimensional house. This translationdid not alwaysgo smoothly for Wittgenstein, as variousanecdotes reveal.Afterthe initial construction, he remained dissatisfiedwith several aspects of the design, which he then proceeded to alter. These changes most infamously include his raisingof the ceiling of the salon by about three inches. At the end, when he was forced to complete the work,he still remained dissatisfied with three windows on the rearfaqadealong the staircase. This situation created the one time Wittgenstein bemoaned having relinquished his share in the family wealth that would have allowed him to pay for the cost of furtherreconstruction. As he later confessed, he bought a lottery ticket in the hope of winning the money to cover the costs. It is not that these are such profoundor unusual activitiesor issues arisingfrom the design and constructionprocesses, but exactlythat they are typical of the experience of design
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assemblage 35

that Wittgensteinencountered. It is this set of problems introduced to Wittgensteinin the practice of architecturethat, in spatializinghis understandingof limits and practice, literally defined a place from which he could reconsiderthe limits and functioning of language and philosophy.The movement through space and the dispositionof use that fostered the reconsiderationof limits and boundariesrevealed how spatialconcepts could not be discardedto leave the philosophical problems intact. This understandinglent itself towardthe creation of a practice-basedaestheticsby showwith traditional ing that spatialproblems sharedterritory philosophical problems in logic and epistemology. Locatingthe house within Wittgenstein's thoughtinvolves the within the between the both philosophy, reading gaps textsand within them. The ten-yeargap markingWittgenstein'sabsence fromphilosophyhas combined with a coincident shift in his philosophicalthinkingto producethe early/latedistinctionoften used to classifyhis work.Understandingthe philosophyinvolvesmore, however,than looking acrossthis ten-yearravineand tryingto connect the splintered edges - either by filling in the gap or by compressingthe space to force the two sides to meet. Ratherthan tryingto further close the space between the Tractatus and the Investigations, it is the textsthemselvesthat need to be opened up by the spaceor breakthatseparates one from the other. The question of how the two texts can be seen together without obliteratingor covering over the space between them - a space that includes Wittgenstein'spractice of architecture - then becomes another way of asking how his practices of architectureand philosophy are related. Wittgenstein had tried to have the texts published together so as to literallyplace the two worksside by side. As he "Fouryearsago I wrote in the preface of the Investigations: had occasion to re-readmy firstbook (the TractatusLogico-

Philosophicus)and to explain its ideas to someone. It suddenly seemed to me that I should publish those old thoughts and the new ones together:that the latter could be seen in the right light only by contrastwith and against the background of my old way of thinking."While he failed in the attempt to publish the workstogether (the publisher of the Tractatuswould not allow it), Wittgenstein did succeed in bringing together the ideas contained in each in another way, within the pages of the Investigations,often around spatial and architecturalconstructs.There they exist not side by side, but interwovenand overlapping,continuing a process that was begun within the house. Through this process, the gap between the worksis not covered over but forms the site from which the late work emerges. The fight for space on the page within the text can also be understoodas a fight waged by space, as it is throughthe spatial that the limitationsof thinking employed by the Investigations the Tractatus's thinking are revealed.In the Investigations, Wittgensteinexplicitlyassociatedthe restrictedvision of the Tractatuswith its understandingof language. In referringto the Tractatus's belief that the general form of a propositionis, "This is how things are,"he wrote:"Thatis the kind of proposition that one repeatsto oneself countless times. One thinks that one is tracingthe outline of the thing'snatureover and over again, and one is merely tracingthe framethroughwhich we look at it" (41114). He continued: "Apictureheld us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeatit to us inexorably" (?f115). In many ways, architectureis exactly what was missing from Wittgenstein'searly work. At firstglance, the Tractatusseems more architecturalwith its strictlyordered and structuredsections. But it representsa purely two-dimensional,visual order based in a one-to-one-to-onecorrelationof language, meaning, and place. The practice of architecture,however, challenged those strict associations.Through the introduction of

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7. LudwigWittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 1953

a new spatialityand the idea of practice, the singularview within the Tractatuswas destroyed;in its place, the reader was left with the realization that the absolute correlationof meaning and place were not a given realitybut a particular way of seeing, one dependent on a fixed viewer. Three-dimensional space dislodged place from the trio of correlations. Reliance on absolute correspondence was furtherdismantled in the later philosophy by replacing the strictlystructured ordering of the Tractatusand institutingan otherwise undifferentiatedand open-ended seriality. The Tractatus'sunderstandingof language and philosophy had depended on the positioning of the viewer as if above and outside of language, looking downwardso as to clearly discern a particularrelation among language, logic, and philosophy. From this viewpoint, all three seemed to share a coincident series of boundaries.The Tractatusdefined these as a series of spatiallimits: "Thelimits of my language mean the limits of my world"(5.6); "Logic pervadesthe world: the limits of the world are also its limits" (5.61). Although the subject shares (nominally) these limits, the philosophy of the Tractatusmade no room for the subject, finding instead that "the subject does not belong to the world:rather,it is a limit of the world"(5.632). The subject "must,"according to the text, "transcendthese propositions,and then he will see the

world aright. . . . (He must, so to speak, throwaway the ladder after he has climbed up it.)" (6.54). That is, the subject has to move beyond what the philosophy of the Tractatushas deas an initial and fined as thinkable. I take this transgression incomplete act, one that literallyleaves the readersuspended in midair. Having climbed up the ladder the subject is stranded,incapable of movement, left solely with vision as the way of perceiving or interactingwith the world. The Investigationsresponded to this act of transgression by reconceptualizing philosophy as inhabitation. No longer was Wittgenstein tryingto define the realm of ethics and aesthetics, practice and the subject, as outside of the limits of language; instead, the Investigationsoffered an understandingof language arising from everydaypractices that are then used to reinvigoratethe discipline of philosophy. It is this shift that makes the transgression of philosophy a necessarystage in Wittgenstein'sdevelopment. This is to say that Wittgenstein's movement outside of philosophy served to form the basis for both his reengagement with and reconceptualizationof the discipline. The text of the Investigationsbegins with the scene of the builders. Their simple language is based on a series of four words:block, pillar, slab, and beam, with an associated series

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8. Robert Morris,Untitled (Slab), 1962

of actions.The builders' is the firstmodelforthe language use of language the Investigations offers.It formsthe basis forthe rejection of a Tractatus-like conceptionof language. as withinphilosophy, the By definingthe realmof practice allowforthe simultaneous builders construction and inhabitation of the spaceof language. AsWittgenstein declaredemphatically, "Wearetalking aboutthe spatial and of language, not aboutsomenontemporal phenomenon 108). (4f spatial, non-temporal phantasm" of habitable The creation of spaceled to the construction the viewfromwithin.This viewdiffers from dramatically the viewfromwithoutin how it positions the subjectin relationto language and to the studyof language. The view fromwithinis incapable, of the however, offering clarity of thatfromabove,withits implication thateverything is available to vision.This changealtersthe roleof visionitbut becomes self.Asa result,visionis no longerprivileged, one of the manypossiblewaysof interacting withthe world. Another thisdistinction is to see the wayof understanding aerialviewof the Tractatus as havingbeen replaced by the viewfromthe streets, a viewthatwouldlaterformthe of HenriLefebvre and Michel de Certeau. everyday The conceptsof boundary, so fundalimit,transgression, mentalto Wittgenstein's cannot be conceived of work, withoutcommitting to certainconceptions of space.The in to define the of the thinklimits Tractatus, attempting outsideof the severely restricted able, is itselfunthinkable I of that have characterized as the view understanding space fromabove.The practice of architecture this challenged of the fixed of understanding spaceby disrupting point view and forcingWittgenstein to confront a seriesof complex constructs irreducible to a spatial singleviewor representation.The resulting the reconceptualized spacerequired of a new of and development understanding philosophy language.

One of Wittgenstein's later criticismsof philosophywas that it was closed off from the outside or largerculturefromwhich it presumably arose.While the earlyphilosophybegan with those same limitationsand moved inwardso as to reworkand redefinethe basisof philosophicalproblemsin epistemology and metaphysicsas problemsof languageand logic, dissolving the originalproblemsin the process;the laterphilosophyof the Investigations moved outwardfrom those self-imposed limits to include the realmof everyday disciplinary practices. As Wittgensteinwrotein the Investigations:
One might say that the concept 'game' is a concept with blurred edges. - 'But is a blurred concept a concept at all?' - Is an indistinct photograph a picture of a person at all? Is it even always an advantage to replace an indistinct picture by a sharp one? Isn't the indistinct one often exactly what we need? [Gottlob] Frege compares a concept to an area and says that an area with vague boundaries cannot be called an area at all. This presumably means that we cannot do anything with it. - But is it senseless to say: 'Stand roughly there'? Suppose that I were standing with someone in a city square and said that. As I say it I do not draw any kind of boundary, but perhaps point with my hand - as if I were indicating a particularspot. And this is just how someone might explain to someone what a game is. (?71)

Figure Credits
1. Maurizio Nannucci, AnotherNotion of Possibility, exhibition catalogue (Vienna: Wiener Secession, 1995). 2-5. Paul Wijdeveld, Ludwig Wittgenstein,Architect(Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1994). 6. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus,trans. D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 7. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations,trans.G. E. M. Anscombe, 3d ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1958). 8. RobertMorris:The Mind/Body Problem,exhibition catalogue (New

York: SolomonR. Guggenheim Museum,1994).

1961).

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