Looking Back at Damisch

This paper conjectures that Hubert Damisch’s (1928-2017) idea of theoretical object potentially compresses the space between the historian and the work of architecture. Formulated differently, the paper postulates that analysis of the notion and device of theoretical object allows us to understand Damisch’s definition of architecture as that aesthetic condition occupying, states Damisch, the gap between ‘form and formlessness’.
In order to test this hypothesis, the paper pursues two lines of investigation.
The first is a close reading of the trope of distance in a series of Damisch’s texts. While other texts are referenced, the paper focuses on “The Space Between”, “The Slightest Difference”, “Against the Slope” and “Anything But”, all read through the lens of Damisch’s notion of theoretical object. This latter is a term Damisch deploys in relation to works of art as early as 1958. In the domain of architecture, the notion of theoretical object first appears in print in Damisch’s 1964 article on Viollet-le-Duc. As the paper demonstrates, Damisch returns to the concept-device periodically over the next four decades.
The paper’s second line of investigation interrogates differences between the La Tourette of Damisch and that of Colin Rowe (1920–1999). Each takes on Le Corbusier’s Dominican Monastery of La Tourette, a project that itself operationalizes spacing, separation, gap, and distance. The paper asks: Which aspects are highlighted and which ignored by each historian? How do the differences in approach and finding manifest themselves? What do these reveal about the limits and latent potential in the historical project?
The paper adds to re-examinations of architectural discourse 1960-2010 and makes a modest contribution to studies on Damisch. The paper addresses the overarching conference theme of distance, approaching the figurative role of distance at stake in the writing of one historian whose impact is still to be assessed.