Machines for living in: Connections and contrasts between designed architecture and the development of living forms

摘要

The phrase 'machines for living in', quoted in the title of this piece, echoes the words of two French thinkers, widely separated in time. The first is the philosopher Rene Descartes, who described the human body as a machine for living in, the inhabiting entity being the mind that Descartes famously regarded as being a distinct and independent entity (Cartesian duality).1 The second is the architect Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris ('Le Corbusier'), who described domestic buildings as machines for living in.2 Architecture has sometimes drawn inspiration from the proportions of already-formed bodies, an approach associated most famously with Vitruvius but, for most of history, consideration of the processes by which bodies and buildings are constructed has been the business of very different sets of people.