TUESDAY, March 3, 2015
N107, Princeton School of Architecture, 5:00pm
Philosophical Flaneur: Nietzsche’s Discovery of the City
In April 1888, in a tempestuous finale after arriving in Turin, Friedrich Nietzsche noted that this was the first city that was more “a paradise for the feet” than for the eyes. Studies of Nietzsche have thus far ignored the fact that in his final months before his breakdown Nietzsche had transformed from a stroller in the mountainous world of Sils-Maria in the Upper Engadine to the “philosophical flaneur” of the modern metropolis, which he was convinced to have found in Turin. Nietzsche’s discovery of the city took place against the backdrop of his turn away from music as a “separate art” [Sonderkunst] of the nineteenth century and toward architecture as the “leading art” [Leitkunst] of 20th century’s modernism. Although unnoticed in the 100 years of Nietzsche studies finally we have to take notice of Nietzsche’s belated yet highly significant turn to architecture.
Jörg H. Gleiter (Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil., M. S.) is an architect and chair of architectural theory at the Berlin Institute of Technology (Technische Universität Berlin). He held positions as professor of aesthetics at Free University of Bozen-Bolzano in Italy (2005-12), deputy professor of Design and architectural theory at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar (2005-07); visiting professor of philosophy of architecture at Waseda University in Tokyo (2003-05) guest professor at Venice International University in Venice (2003); in 2008 he founded the book series ArchitekturDenken. Among his books on architectural theory and aesthetics are Ornament Today. Digital, Material, Structural (ed., Bozen-Bolzano 2012, in English); Urgeschichte der Moderne (Prehistory of Modernity) (Bielefeld 2010); Der philosophische Flaneur. Nietzsche und die Architektur (The Philosophical Flaneur – Nietzsche and Architecture) (Würzburg 2009); Architekturtheorie heute (Architecture Theory Today) (Bielefeld 2008).
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