Theory of the Fictive and Its Architectural Significance with Richard Neutra′s Residential Architecture as a Case Study

Abstract

This paper discusses the fictive performance of architecture in reference to the re-description of human conditions. First, following Paul Ricoeur′s notion of the fictive, the paper illuminates one′s engagement with a setting from the perspective of dialectics between the subjectivity of the perceiver and the infinite potentials of the setting that can never be fully predicted by tools of architectural representations. What is real is not so much in the objective properties of the elements of a setting as in the elements′ mutual correspondence and reflectivity of which the perceiver is already part. Second, the paper takes as a case study Richard Neutra′s residential architecture to demonstrate the fictive nature of a setting that re-describes human conditions. Of particular interest is how Neutra established the relationship among fire, wind and water, and how he conjoined this dialectical ensemble of the primary elements of cosmos with a daybed operating dualistically both as the place of burning erotic love and the place of unperturbed death. The paper finally demonstrates how the significance of the setting was predicated upon the elements′ mutual correspondence in the process of which what Neutra called the primary Gestalt of human living, or life and death, is re-described.