ASA JOURNAL Vol.2 | 2018

For Ruskin, the interest of architecture came from the
action of working upon materials. (fig 8) The emphasis on
‘practice’ rather than on theories, as Ruskin suggested here,
seems to be one aspect of a difference between the British
concern with materials and that of French and Germanspeaking
countries.
If the tendency not to separate doing from thinking
was specific to British concerns with materials in the nineteenth
century, it has some affinities with the philosophy of phenomenology
concerning the close relationship between idea and
things. In his essay ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’, the
philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976, fig 9) made a
criticism against Platonism and the tendency to make a
distinction between ideas and things that underlay Western
Philosophy up to the twentieth century. Heidegger argued that
these two domains must not be treated separately:
To keep at a distance all the preconceptions and assaults
of the above modes of thought, to leave the thing to
rest in its own self, for instance, in its thing-being. What
seem easier than to let a being be just the being that
it is? Or does this turn out to be the most difficult of
tasks, particularly if such an intention – to let a being
be as it is – represents the opposite of the indifference
that simply turns its back upon the being itself in favor
of an unexamined concept of being? We ought to turn
toward the being, think about it in regard to its being,
but by means of this thinking at the same time let it
rest upon itself in its very own being. (1975: 31)
For Heidegger, the ideas of the thing lie not in something
that preconceives it, but in our perception of the thing
and in the thing itself. Furthermore, in relation to the creation
of a work, Heidegger stated: ‘to create is to cause something
to emerge as a thing that has been brought forth’. (1975: 60)
Earlier in the text, he talked about the creation of the work in
relation to the materials.
When a work is created, brought forth out of this
or that work-material – stone, wood, metal, color,
language, tone – we say also that it is made, set forth
out of it. But just as the work requires a setting up in
the sense of a consecrating-praising erection, because
the work’s work-being consists in the setting up a
world, so a setting forth is needed because the
work-being of the work itself has the character of
setting forth. The work as work, in its presencing, is
a setting forth, a making. But what does the work set
forth? We come to know about this only when we explore
what comes to the fore and is customarily spoken
of as the making or production of works. (1975: 45)
Any raw material – ‘something lying at the
ground of thing, something always already there’ – for Heidegger,
as for Ruskin, is inert; but once it is brought forth and
made to stand for the properties it self-evidently acquires, it
will be turned to become the work that has a capacity to represent
the thingness of the thing, of which the work is made.
As Heidegger put it, ‘to let a being be as it is’ (1975: 31) or ‘The
work lets the earth to be an earth’ (1975: 46), and it is this
revelation process of the matter that Heidegger regarded as
the art of architecture.
A building that well illustrates Heidegger’s idea is
Kelling Place, Norfolk, the country house designed and built
by the Arts and Crafts architect Edward Prior between 1904
and 1906. (fig 10) At Kelling Place, Prior took to the extreme
Ruskin’s idea of turning something worthless into something
of value. To the south of the site, an area of land was excavated
to the depth of six feet where materials such as gravel, flint
pebbles and sand were found. Prior managed to use them as
building materials for the construction of the house; gravel
was used as aggregate for mass-concrete wall construction;
flint pebbles as facing materials; and sand as mortar. Only
relatively small quantities of brownstone, flat tiles and pantiles
were imported for walling details, chimneys and decorations.
On its own, each individual piece of material in the walls of
the house does not mean much, and to remove it from its place
in the wall, it would be to reveal it as raw and natural as when
it came out of the earth, but the overall effect of the materials
is a lively, relentless patterning of diverse textures and colours,
transcending the natural state of the materials. (fig 11) Prior’s
handling of local materials may be regarded as an affinity with
locality and the economy of materials (Cruickshank, 1999:
42), but what turned the ‘raw matter’ lying there into an
extraordinary piece of architecture is a combination of
architects’ determination and human labour. In this respect,
what turned inert matter into life was ‘practice’. It is precisely
in this sense that Prior brought forth the matters lying there
in the ground and made them stand forth so that one can see
Kelling Place as a demonstration of Heidegger’s essay. It is here
in practice – something that can neither be isolated before nor
added after, but something that plays its part through the
process – that essentially turns inert matter into the work of
architecture.
This brief history of materials in the 19th century, as we have
so far considered, draws attention to the existence of differing
views amongst architects and theorists as to the nature of
‘material’. Each proposition is ‘right’ in its own eyes for it is
formulated according to its existing principles and philosophies.
It is this basis that leaves us wide open to the debate on
materials. It can be discussed again and again as long as
building culture is still active, and it is possible for every
References
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Dan Cruickshank. (1999). “Material Values: E.S. Prior’s Home Place, Norfolk” The Architect’s Journal 210, 19 (November 18)
Adrian Forty. (2000) Words and Buildings. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd.
Martin Heidegger. (1975). “The Origin of the Work of Art.” In Poetry, Language, Thought. Translated by Albert Hofstadter.
New York; Toronto: Harper & Row; Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited.
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———. (1855) Encyclopedie d’ Architecture 5, 6 (June 1)
building culture to define materials according to their understanding
and circumstances; that is to say, material can be
valued in a way, not necessarily the same as elsewhere.
Notwithstanding, one question remains: is quality of architectural
work dependent on material, or independent from it?
This is the problem that arises in dealing with material as an
architectural theory.
Richard Weston. (2003). Materials, Form and Architecture. London: Laurence King Publishing Ltd.