INQUIRY

INQUIRY • Volume 19, 2015
east, a new university complex, parks, residences, a modern
train station and, most importantly, an Imperial square (the
Kaiserplatz) adorned on three sides by immense stone buildings.
The spacious new boulevards, sightlines and grandiose
architectural language of the new edifices which made up
the “new town” (Neustadt) still stand in stark contrast to the
old city center on the Grande-Île, where winding, narrow
streets are lined with rows of densely-packed half-timbered
houses. This stunning transformation of Strasbourg was not
only the product of political exhibitionism but also an event
intimately inscribed in the major architectural movements
that swept across Europe in the late nineteenth century. The
eighteen hundreds saw the last outpourings of monarchical
ostentation, but they also gave rise to the first age of public
health and the birth of modern city-planning. Yet, unlike the
urban renovations of metropolises like Paris and Vienna, the
extension of Strasbourg left the historic city center largely
intact; exhibitionist tendencies were here tempered by a
respect for the existing urban fabric of the Grande-Île. Alsace
stands in a singular position with relation to its two cultural
parents France and Germany. Strasbourg, as its capital, has
been a cultural center and strategic military point throughout
the ages; today, it is one of the seats of the European Union
and serves both literally and figuratively as the bridge upon
the river Rhine. This study examines the plural impulses
which shaped the urban face of Strasbourg in the Wilhemien
period (1871–1918) and the remarkable changes and
continuities which the city underwent as it passed back into
French hands in the first quarter of the twentieth century.
Formulae of Magick: A Critical Re-Evaluation of Aleister
Crowley’s Magickal View of the World in Light of
Nietzsche’s Gay Science
James M. Kopf, German
Sponsor: Professor Friedrich Ulfers, German
This paper examines the philosophical thought of
Aleister Crowley, an occultist and thinker from early twentieth
century Britain, against a backdrop of Nietzsche’s
philosophy of science. It explores the system of thought
outlined by Aleister Crowley in his major theoretical work,
Magick in Theory and Practice, and places this text in
conversation with Nietzsche, specifically The Gay Science.
Through this process, not only is Crowley’s epistemological
system elucidated but also, hopefully, the meaning of
some of Nietzsche’s seemingly paradoxical statements
on science can be teased out. It is argued that Crowley’s
magickal system is an outgrowth or perhaps even a direct
descendent of Nietzsche’s views on science and the study
of the world, while still retaining a unique identity. This
argument positions a critical reinterpretation of Crowley’s
“magick” as a methodology/scientific system for studying
that world, a system which stands in opposition to the
dominant view of scientific thinking and which is based on
empirical observation and traditional rationality. In so doing,
the author hopes to both construct a critical interpretation of
Crowley’s works and encourage a conversation arguing for a
re-evaluation of Crowley’s thought, which has been unfairly
dismissed, likely, as a result of Crowley’s association with
magic and other widely discredited ideas. Further, following
Nietzsche’s urging in The Gay Science, the author hopes
to spark a conversation on the future of scientific thought.
Defending Architectural Poiesis: Designing the Dynamism
of Life
Sharel Liu, Urban Design and Architecture Studies
Sponsor: Professor Jon Ritter, Urban Design and Architecture
Studies
Architecture is a record of social values that is physically
omnipresent yet subliminally sensate. Stemming from
a long tradition of atavism, architecture swung abruptly to
the dehumanizing functionalism of modernism. Yet, as we
enter postmodernity, how do we recapture the experience of
our age? This epoch is at once dubbed the Digital Age, the
Anthropocene and the age of globalization. Yet, from these
various masks emerges the binding agent of poststructuralism,
a contemporary movement implying that architecture
approaches life as a process. How then do we design architecture
that evolves as a function of life? This study makes
use of design as research, site inspections in New York and
interpretive phenomenological analysis (“IPA”) to investigate
an architectural idiom that enhances the relationships
among architecture, its inhabitants and its surroundings.
By augmenting life’s dynamic interconnectedness, this
architecture model suggests a less anthropocentric and more
truthful understanding of ourselves in how we relate to the
world around us.
Eternalizing the Ephemeral: Photographic Stills of the
José Limón Technique
Charalambia Louka, Neural Science
Sponsor: Professor Maria de Lourdes Dávila, Spanish and
Portuguese
Photographic stills of dance present an ontological
paradox that vacillates between two key philosophies in
the fields of photography and dance: photography is an art
that harnesses the power of existing as an extension of the
real, while dance is an act that ceases to exist the moment a
choreographic moment is complete. It is this contradiction
that has challenged the aim of dance photography in eternalizing
the ephemeral. This study focuses on the ontological
underpinnings of dance photography through an exploration
of dance stills of Mexican choreographer and dancer
José Limón. The José Limón technique is unique in certain
choreographic aspects involving the gravity and respiration
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