Nietzsche’s Conception of Place: Blueprint for an Architecture of the Future

Abstract

In today’s ‘Hypermodern’ world, where space-time compression and digital technological innovations are the dominant modes of existence, Nietzsche’s ideas can still offer alternative perspectives and ways of life. One of the main issues that spatial design disciplines have to face within hypermodernity is the growing deterritorialization of events and human inter-actions, the insurmountable distancing between bodies in space. Digital technology creates ‘spaces of flows’ that transcend communities, regions, places, localities and persons, inaugurating an exponential dematerialization of social and human relations. Although there are strong indications that Nietzsche’s nomadic way of life and thinking would perhaps endorse the digital turn, I would like to argue in the present paper that if we read his textual corpus closely, attentively and slowly, a new possibility emerges: the great value of embodied thinking. My basic working hypothesis is that thinking through the body needs proximity: real Places of the Outside, whether natural or urban, in order to unfold itself. Nietzsche can be used against digitalization and hypermodern ‘non-places’. More specifically, it seems that an important topic has been relatively neglected so far within the vast secondary literature of Nietzsche Studies: his concept, idea or notion of place. This paper aims to offer an introductory analysis of Nietzsche’s conception of place, as elaborated mainly in <i>Ecce Homo</i>. I will try to show the close relationship between place and inspiration, <i>Stimmung</i> and the body, arguing in favor of a new philosophy of locality. I will then suggest that this new idea of place has potentially very interesting consequences, and could open up new, radical questions for contemporary and future architectural theory and practice.