Contingent Presences in Architecture: Vitruvian Theory as a Beginning

This paper claims that architecture is a contingent discipline, despite the fact that its contingency has long been denied through a retreat to Vitruvian writing. It is evident that contingency is rejected not only by architecture but also by modernity as a whole. Vitruvius attempted to cover the entire field of architecture in a systematic form in order to bring the whole body of this great discipline to a complete order. The legacy of his theory hitherto lasted not only that it is the only major work on the architecture of Classical Antiquity to have survived, but also that its conformity with the project of modernity. In the scope of the paper, it will be argued that contingency should be taken into account rather than avoided as a potential threat. 

• Zelal Çinar

• Architecture
• contingency
• modernity
• Vitruvius.

[1] W.Rasch,NiklasLuhmann’s Modernity: The Paradoxes of Differentiation, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000,p.52.
[2] Jeremy Till, Architecture Depends, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2009, p.32.
[3] Vitruvius, Ten Books on Architecture, Trans. M. H. Morgan. New York: Dover Press, 1960, p.10.
[4] G. Broadbent, R. Bunt, and C. Jencks, eds. Signs, Symbols and Architecture. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1980, p.76.
[5] I.Kagis McEwen, Vitruvius: Writing the Body of Architecture. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2003.
[6] Ibid., p.11.
[7] Vitruvius, Ten Books on Architecture, Trans. M. H. Morgan. New York: Dover Press, 1960, p.169.
[8] I.Kagis McEwen, Vitruvius: Writing the Body of Architecture. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2003, p.12.
[9] Z. Bauman, Intimations of Postmodernity, London: Routledge, 1992, p. xiii.
[10] Z. Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991, p. 30.
[11] Vitruvius, Ten Books on Architecture, Trans. M. H. Morgan. New York: Dover Press, 1960,p.4
[12] Ibid. p.39.
[13] Ibid. p.40.
[14] Ibid. p.257.
[15] H.F.Malgrave, Architectural Theory, New York: Blackwell, Vol.1 p.6.
[16] Vitruvius, Ten Books on Architecture, Trans. M. H. Morgan. New York: Dover Press, 1960, p.72.
[17] Ibid. p.103.
[18] Ibid. p.174.
[19] Ibid. p.17.
[20] K.Karatani, Architecture as Metaphor: Language, Number, Money. Trans. SabuKohso. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1995, p. ix.
[21] Z. Bauman, Wasted Lives: Modernity and Its Outcasts, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004, p.31.