Papers by César A Cruz
From Germany to the modern American metropolises, 1905–1927
AMPS Proceedings Series 38.1, 2025
In their university days, many architects would have run across the essays “Building Dwelling Thi... more In their university days, many architects would have run across the essays “Building Dwelling Thinking” and “Poetically, Man Dwells” by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. These essays have united generations of architects around the notion that a work of architecture which does not acknowledge and incorporate notions of place does not meet the highest aims of architecture. The purpose of this paper is to move from Heidegger’s quasi-romantic notions of poetic dwelling to more pointed warnings regarding technological thinking. Though this has been well established in other works by Heidegger and his scholars, this paper relies on works by the philosopher that have remained untranslated until recently and are largely unknown. These include the author’s own translations of Heidegger’s poetry, short commentaries, and the essay “Man’s Dwelling” (Das Wohnen des Menschen). The latter is especially valuable because it serves as a coda to the two previous essays “Building Dwelling Thinking” and “Poetically, Man Dwells.” “Man’s Dwelling” also lends this paper its three orienting principles: unpoetic dwelling, the adulation of science, and the mechanization of man. As an illustrative example, this paper delves into the debates amongst modern architects around two iconic precepts: form follows function, and a house is a machine for living. In an academic and professional era that is centered upon technological tools and methods, and in the burgeoning age of generative AI, the author presents this paper as a continuing caution against the uncritical and unfeeling adoption of technological means in the classroom and professional practice.
Arq-architectural Research Quarterly, Mar 1, 2019
Henry Klumb: Puerto Rico’s critical modernist
Architectural Research Quarterly
In February 1944 a thirty-nine-year-old itinerant architect named Heinrich ‘Henry’ Klumb [1] (190... more In February 1944 a thirty-nine-year-old itinerant architect named Heinrich ‘Henry’ Klumb [1] (1905–1984), moved to the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico for what was supposed to be a short-term, public works job with the island’s provincial government, that is, a territorial government that had been established and was largely supervised by the American federal government. At the time of his arrival on the island, Klumb was a one-time German immigrant, a former protégé of Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Kahn’s occasional design and business partner during the mid-to-late 1930s, and a moderately successful designer of a variety of projects and building types. These early projects and building types included residences, prototype prefabricated buildings and houses, museum exhibits, furniture pieces, and a number of housing and urban master plans. Over the next forty years he would emerge as Puerto Rico’s most locally well-known and prolific modern architect. His major successes on the island ...
Architecture Philosophy, 2016
This is the first and only known English translation of Martin Heidegger's 1970 essay "Das Wohnen... more This is the first and only known English translation of Martin Heidegger's 1970 essay "Das Wohnen Des Menschen". The essay serves as a coda to two earlier and more well-known essays ("Building Dwelling Thinking" and "Poetically Man Dwells") that have become central to the field of architectural phenomenology.
The author is the Germany philosopher Martin Heidegger, translated from German to English by César A. Cruz.
Henry Klumb: Puerto Rico's critical modernist
arq: Architectural Research Quarterly, 2018
The German-Puerto Rican architect Heinrich “Henry” Klumb (1905-1984) is Puerto Rico's most prolif... more The German-Puerto Rican architect Heinrich “Henry” Klumb (1905-1984) is Puerto Rico's most prolific, locally well-known, and celebrated modern architect. Over the forty years that he called Puerto Rico home, he enjoyed a highly productive architecture practice. In this paper I examine two aspects of his professional practice that demonstrated a principled and noble approach to architecture, and that were grounded in his critiques of several of the leading figures and dogmas of the Modern Architecture movement. The first is Klumb’s core architectural principles of (1) an adherence to higher values, (2) the maxim that man is the measure of all things, and (3) the practice of an architecture of social concern. The second aspect is a series of creative adaptations of modern design and construction practices that are evident in the houses that Klumb designed and built in Puerto Rico between 1944 and 1975. In the end, I contend that Klumb's legacy should be seen not as having brought the Modern Architecture movement to Puerto Rico (an untenable historiographical proposition) but rather in bending and willing Modern Architecture towards a more humane, and environmentally and culturally sensitive endeavor.
Conference Presentations by César A Cruz
NCBDS #37 Conference Proceedings, 2022
Teaching building structures in the context of an undergraduate architecture curriculum often pri... more Teaching building structures in the context of an undergraduate architecture curriculum often privileges narrowly-focused, quantitative, engineering-based methods that relate to discrete building components (i.e., the analysi s and sizing of individual structural elements such as a beam, column, or truss). In reference to this conference's theme, this is akin to the concrete being subsumed by the abstract, what is readily apparent by the unseen, the blatant by the latent. In these situations, the potential pitfall is for students and instructors to be so consumed with the calculations typically employed in these courses (for example, calculating a bending moment, moment of inertia, section modulus, centroid, or slenderness ratio, to name just a few) that they fail to also see building structures in more wholistic ways. This situation is what one student described as "I can do structures. I just don't understand structures." This should not happen in our courses. Instead, the goal in a structures class should be for students to become adept across a spectrum that encompasses technical details and calculations, as well as the logic that governs the overal l system and its individual components.
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Papers by César A Cruz
The author is the Germany philosopher Martin Heidegger, translated from German to English by César A. Cruz.
Conference Presentations by César A Cruz