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March 5, 2005
If Auschwitz stands for the ultimate uninhabitability of modernity, then it implies the impossiblity of dwelling and being at home. How do we inhabit the megapolis--be at home in the transitory world of a Sydney or Los Angeles?
Has this impossibility been given architectural form?
Does being at home in modernity mean making oneself at home all over again, as opposed to retreating to the pastoral as a way to recovering a sense of belonging and rootedness now lost?
Is architecture able to come to terms with our experience of modernity as opposed to building cheap innercity apartments, prestige corporate buildings and suburban McMansions?
I do not know the answer to these questions. But answering them would involve reworking the past.
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