Project of Historical Architecture

In a note contained in his Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough, Wittgenstein wrote: “[…] one might begin a book on anthropology in this way: When we watch the life and behaviour of men all over the earth, we see that apart from what we might call animal activities, taking food &c., &c., men also carry out actions that bear a peculiar character and might be called ritualistic.” Wittgenstein’s remark provides a good starting point in order to observe contemporary landscapes and cities. Wittgenstein suggests the possibility to observe both “animal” and “ritualistic” activities, without pre-conceived exclusions, and so implicitly also all consequences of these activities in terms of transformations of the environment, so both “animal” and “ritualistic” landscapes. Also, Wittgenstein suggest that “animal” activities need an “animal” explanation, while “ritual” activities need a “ritual” explanation. Modern architecture, starting from Laugier’s account of the production of the “primitive hut”, has been based on a strict reductivism, one that maintained that all architectural phenomena could be explained in “functional” (or “animal” according to Wittgenstein’s terminology) terms. Ritual actions, ritual landscapes, and ritual buildings were consequently excluded from the attention of Modern (and, for that matter, also Post-Modern) architecture.