The thesis project critically investigates the longue durĂ©e of the âanthropological turnâ in modern architecture, an architectural attitude that seeks to understand form in terms of life, labor, gestures, and broader philosophical questions of what it means to exist as humans. It describes an approach that attempts to narrow the gap between design and practice, that questions the alienation of labor and the commodification of dwelling, and that searches for enduring meanings within the act of construction. The thesis argues that this turn is not an isolated postwar development, as it has been discussed in historiography, but a recurring tendencyâproductive while also deeply contradictoryâthat reemerges across the trajectory of modern architecture, particularly in moments of crisis. Rather than constituting a coherent movement, this gaze appears across a constellation of heterogenous figures whose works spans the mid-nineteenth to the late twentieth century. Through close readings of paradigmatic case studies, the thesis examines how architects developed this approach in thought and practice, often to confront the cultural, political, and material ruptures of their time. By reconstructing this longue durĂ©e, the thesis argues that such anthropological approaches constitute a persistent strand of architectural thought, a recurring attempt to rethink the discipline, by returning to the fundamental relations between human, making, and the built environmentâan effort that has generated both new critical possibilities, while also producing new myths and ideologies.
