Philosophy of Architecture

During the presentation of his work entitled “Vernacular Architecture in Bosnia and Herzegovina” at The First International Conference on Urban and Architectural Heritage in Islamic Countries (FCUAHIC, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 23-28 May 2010), the Author met Nader Ardalan, a professor at Harvard University Graduate School of Design (Harvard University Faculty of Design, USA). During a long conversation, the Author learned that Professor Ardalan at Harvard University, among other things, teaches the course “Philosophy of Architecture”. In his fundamental scientific work (doctoral dissertation, 1987), the Author treated philosophy as an important segment of the social environment of Architecturally Defined Space (ADS). However, with Professor Ardalan, philosophy is a subject, part of the unique term Philosophy of Architecture. When the Author asked Professor Ardalan: “Professor Ardalan, what is your understanding of the term sustainability?”, the professor replied: “We all have our parents, and they have theirs, and so on; if we manage to understand this chain, we will also understand the essence of the term 'sustainability'. Since we are all different as individuals, we will also have our own specific understanding of this term. However, what is common in this different understanding is the understanding of life as a continuum”. Although the Author of this work had already developed ‘his general view of the world’ at that time, and of architecture as a part of it, he experienced this understanding of the term 'sustainability' presented by Professor Ardalan as a ‘true philosophy’ that is close to him. From 2010 to the present, the Author has published a number of books whose content approached the term 'philosophy of architecture', and in this book he explicitly placed that term in the title of this work and elaborated on it. The Author suggests that future readers of this work, in parallel with reading its content, also follow the content of the extensive and richly illustrated book: Hadrovic A. (2021). Network of architectural paths: trajectories of bioclimatic architecture and architecture of abstract forms, Faculty of Architecture, University of Sarajevo.