The End as Emptiness : A Transcultural Reflection on Architectural Practices

The logic of the tetralemma, as interpreted by the Japanese philosopher Yamauchi Tokuryū, integrates space as an in-between sphere in thinking. In his understanding, the tetralemma allows for a combination of four relational operations: one of identity, one of contradiction, the complementarity of both, and even the negation of this complementarity. I will examine the notion of the end in these four parameters, regarding the relevance of this reflection for the architectural practice and theory in inter- and transcultural terms. To that end, one example from contemporary and one from traditional Japanese architecture is discussed. Because of the philosophical context of Yamauchi’s research in the 1970s, his argumentation is compared to a critique on the metaphysical background of the idea of identity, by reflecting on conceptual contributions of Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, and Bernhard Waldenfels, to question the tetralemma in the horizon of differentiation.