81 HUMAN ARCHITECTURE: JOURNAL OF THE SOCIOLOGY OF SELF-KNOWLEDGE, IX, 1, WINTER 2011, 81-88 I. INTRODUCTION The nexus between issues of meaning in architecture, the analogies between func- tions of architecture, and the projection or formation of identity have long dominated the literature in philosophy of architecture. Anatol Rapaport’s (1968) The Personal Element in Housing, John Turner’s (1976) Housing by People, David Appleyard’s (1979) Home, Yi-Fu Tuan’s (1977) Space and Place, and Christian Norberg Schulz’s (1980) Genius Loci are some of the works that have focused on the depiction of archi- tecture as a way of identity expression or self realization. All these writings have dealt with either the ways that architecture has been a reflection of the cultural-physi- cal environment into which we were born or the ways architecture has been an oppor- tunity to express our own conception of the self, which might be shaped with reference to the multiplicity of sources that cannot be bounded by the cultural or historical context. This is the question this paper aims to answer: Which conception of the self should we be informed by, if we want to Durukan Kuzu is a Ph.D. Candidate and a teaching assistant in Government Department at the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK. His interests include Multiculturalism, Identity Theories in Applied Set- tings, Phenomenology, Nationalism and Ethnicity Studies, Self-Governments, Minority Problems, Human Rights, Democratization, and Egalitarian Liberalism. He is an executive member of the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism at LSE, UK and he is co-chairing the 2011\12 ASEN seminar series on Politics of Gender and Nationalism at LSE. Heidegger and Sartre Phenomenological Conceptions of the “Self” and the Ontology of Architecture Durukan Kuzu London School of Economics and Political Science, UK –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– d.kuzu@lse.ac.uk Abstract: This paper aims to answer the question: Which conception of the self should we be informed by, if we want to understand the true essence of the self as well as architecture? To this end, I criticize the architectural theories that have been dominantly inspired by Heidegger’s phe- nomenological approach, suggesting that those who regard architecture as a morphological con- cept that has been defined and determined by the context in which it appears overlook the significance of the negation process, active agency and consciousness of being. Those scholars who overly focus on human relation to space also underestimate the human relation to self. These aspects of self are respectively discussed in reference to the modernist, post-modernist and biological architecture. The paper concludes in agreement with Susan Herrington that “an expla- nation of its materials, mode of production and representations cannot account for an ontology of [architecture]” (2008:62). If we want to understand the true essence of the self and architecture we have to be informed by Sartre’s philosophical approach that conceptualizes the self as an active agent whose existence cannot be preceded by essence. HUMAN ARCHITECTURE: JOURNAL OF THE SOCIOLOGY OF SELF-KNOWLEDGE ISSN: 1540-5699. © Copyright by Ahead Publishing House (imprint: Okcir Press) and authors. All Rights Reserved. HUMAN ARCHITECTURE Journal of the Sociology of Self- A Publication of OKCIR: The Omar Khayyam Center for Integrative Research in Utopia, Mysticism, and Science (Utopystics)