Building Traffic: Homo Textus Goes Architectural

The age-old archetype, homo religiosus, or the human being capable of experiencing the sacred, has shifted allegiance in the postmodern age. From experiencing the divine either through nature or through allowing for the emergence of inner human nature, the postmodern agent has gone from self-representations that can be described as a/textual, to textual, architextual, and architectural. In my essay I discuss strategies of representing architectonic thought not only through the visual media – one draws – but also through verbalization – one writes about what one sees. I’ll place in juxtaposition the literary value inherent in the statements made by some of the most iconic American architects with their general credo that all architectural design configures what it mediates. My claim is that the aim of modernist architecture is to poeticize the stone.