ANDREW BALLANTYNE

Architecture, Life, and Habit

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i. background in Benjamin’s schema, which is explored here, is
the way that we come to know the buildings with
When we discuss architecture, we make buildings which we are very familiar, which is rather through
the focus of our attention, but that is an unusual habit than from focused visual attention. When
condition. The buildings that are involved with our we have made ourselves thoroughly habituated
daily lives are part of our system of habits, and we to something, through many repetitions, we can
live our lives with them in the background, un- cease to be conscious of it and can perform rou-
problematically, as unconscious of their role as tine tasks without giving them much attention at
we are of the air that we breathe or the time all, even tasks of considerable complexity.3 In re-
that is passing. In order to understand the re- cent years there has been some attempt to broaden
lationship that we have with buildings, we need the range of sensory perceptions that inform a
to take note of the way habits are formed, and response to architecture, including discussion of
how they become part of who we are. Walter Ben- buildings’ acoustic effects or their appeal to the
jamin made this point, or something like it, in his sense of touch, but such studies belong in the first
essay on the work of art in the age of its tech- category above, giving the building concentrated
nological reproducibility, where he contrasts the attention, tending to involve consideration of the
person who concentrates on a work of art and is building as an artwork, albeit an artwork that deals
absorbed by it with the consumption of art by the in a range of sensory experiences.4
“distracted masses” who “absorb the work of art However, for the buildings that we use every
into themselves.”1 “This is most obvious,” he says, day, this mode of contemplation is unimportant.
“with regard to buildings.”2 A tourist who is vis- If everything is going well, we do not focus on
iting a famous building for its aesthetic interest the building but rather on what we are trying to
will give it concentrated attention and will take do in it. This is the case even where the build-
photographs of it to help preserve the memory ing has a definite presence in the artworld: in its
of having been at the place, which will be experi- routine use, the building is more or less ignored,
enced for only a brief interlude. If we are being and what matters about it, for its inhabitants, is
invited to value a building’s aesthetic qualities, whether their life-habits are conveniently accom-
then it is usually presented in order to appeal to modated.
such a view. Architecture books abound in fine In this regard, the appropriate conceptual
photographs of buildings, nearly always without model for the building is not the artwork, but
people in them, and we are invited visually to ap- the tool, and the aesthetic appreciation of the
praise the composition of form and void. This way building cannot be separated from what it does.
of appreciating buildings has its roots in the art- This article argues for a pragmatist aesthetics of
world, where we expect to focus our attention on architecture, where the sense of the building-in-
artworks and to derive some benefit by doing so. use is given weight and where an ethical aspect
This approach has a very powerful appeal, and seems inescapable. This in no way undermines a
it is not to be wished away, but it is not the fo- “contemplative” appreciation of buildings, which
cus of this article’s attention. The alternative view here is characterized as the tourist’s gaze; but if


c 2011 The American Society for Aesthetics
44 The Aesthetics of Architecture

we want to understand how buildings come to be model of the mechanism that is at work here. In
more closely implicated in people’s lives and iden- evolution it is unlikely that the things learned by
tities, then we need to understand something of an organism can find their way into its DNA, but
the bond that is established through habitual use. in an individual’s life, habits that are firmly ac-
A pragmatist aesthetics can allow us to value the quired remain in place as characteristic patterns
things about a building that matter to us when we of behavior and make possible uniquely intelligent
are using the building and it is working well. The and “human” activities, even the most advanced.
tourist’s gaze removes such things from consider- Wordsworth said that “the child is father of the
ation, preferring visual spectacle, and it has domi- man,” and in that unscientific sense we might be
nated the way that architecture is presented. This said to “evolve” from infant to adult, by way of a

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article, by considering the idea of habit, taking mechanism such as Butler describes.7 Perhaps his
cues from Samuel Butler and Eileen Gray, seeks theory is best seen as a vast anthropomorphism,
to focus attention on the building as a support for stretching back across millions of generations, that
life and to see that focus as a legitimate part of has some intuitive plausibility because it resonates
aesthetic analysis. with personal memories of earlier iterations of
oneself. It is this “poetic” version of his theory that
is helpful here, seeing the habits acquired in child-
ii. design for life hood as producing the adolescent and the habits of
youth as the means of producing the adult. Shake-
Samuel Butler made “habit” the key principle in speare crystallized the sequence into “seven ages
both his understanding of life and in his Lamarck- of man,” which could be redescribed here as seven
ian theory of evolution, set out in various works, “generations” of habits in the “evolution” from
including, most importantly, Life and Habit, where cradle to grave.8
he uses the example of learning to play a tricky What interests me in Butler’s argument is how,
piece of music on the piano. We have to pick our along the way, he redraws the barriers between
way through it, hesitatingly and painstakingly at categories that would normally be kept distinct.
first, with many repetitions, until the sequence of The boundary between organic and inorganic en-
notes is thoroughly ingrained and one can concen- tities is dissolved, as is the boundary that makes
trate on nuances of expression rather than track- an individual’s identity distinct from that of a pre-
ing down the next key. Butler uses this as a model vious generation or from its surroundings. Every
for the many other habits we acquire and which we part of our bodies is composed of elements that
subsequently perform unconsciously.5 Each new can be analyzed as inorganic. We do not think of
piece demands this kind of attention, so that al- carbon as organic when we find it in diamonds,
though we learn it as a habit, we remain aware or calcium as organic when we find it in rocks,
of the process, whereas we can more or less for- but we ingest carbon and calcium, iron and oxy-
get how we acquired a skill like writing, learned gen, and metabolize them. We inherit our instincts,
in childhood with laborious effort and much con- and when we find ourselves in situations that our
centration on the formation of letters and words. instincts recognize, they tell us what to do. We
When we write as adults we form our letters un- might recognize this at a conscious level when we
consciously and think about the sense we are try- sense danger and our adrenalin starts to raise our
ing to convey with our writing, not about how metabolic rate, but Butler suggests that there is
to shape the individual letters. Butler’s theory of a similar kind of ingrained “habit” at work at a
evolution led him to believe that things we have molecular level, when the cells in an ovum find
done unconsciously all our lives (by instinct)— themselves in circumstances where they respond
things like seeing, growing, or breathing—were by developing into something that previously they
once learned with difficulty, not by any recent rel- were not.9 Somewhere in their evolution, mol-
atives, but by very distant prehuman ancestors. lusks appeared with the habit of building houses
Butler knew that this notion did not belong to sci- for themselves from minerals in their environ-
ence, and he explicitly repudiated that claim: it ment, and the modern mollusk continues this prac-
was, he said, an experiment in thought.6 The same tice—instinctually, without conscious thought—this
could be said of his novels. Darwin’s properly sci- “intelligence” is distributed through the body at
entific idea of “natural selection” is the preferred the cellular level in its DNA, so the building is
Ballantyne Architecture, Life, and Habit 45

constructed from what is at hand, making a individual, which takes in the surroundings and
dwelling to shelter and protect the creature within the way of life, and the same sense of the unself-
and allowing it to lead its life. However it hap- conscious habits of life being reified into spatial
pened, and however many millions of genera- configurations, items of furniture, and enclosed
tions ago, the mollusk’s body began producing this volumes of building. These arrangements antic-
hard shell by ingesting calcium carbonate and se- ipate a certain range of habits, accommodating
creting it with a changed crystalline structure as some of them closely and directly, others more
aragonite.10 The means of production are now so flexibly. For example, the main space of the house
profoundly embodied in contemporary mollusks at Roquebrune has basically a linear configura-
that, by this innate property, which one could tion, with one side facing the sea, and that side is

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call an unconscious instinct or (as Butler did) a glazed and has a terrace along it, while the other
“habit,” they produce these houses. “Habits” and side is closed. It seems to be a sensible way to orga-
“instincts” shape all animals at a biological level nize the house, and one needs to restore a histori-
and make possible the activities characteristic of cal perspective in order to sense how remarkably
every species. direct and clear-sighted an approach this was when
it was adopted in the late 1920s—in the immediate
wake of Le Corbusier’s Pavillon de l’Esprit Nou-
iii. shell versus machine veau and his white cubic villas. Gray prioritized
the habits of living that she wanted her house to
At a level much closer to commonsense intuition promote, but paid little heed to the habits of de-
we can find the Irish designer and architect Eileen signing and building that would have been known
Gray thinking about her furniture along similar to the local craftsmen. It is remarkably unclut-
lines. She had a problematic involvement with Le tered by the conventional trappings of domestic-
Corbusier, who was fascinated by the house that ity of the time and of her background, which was
Gray designed and had built at Roquebrune, on aristocratic. It is an expression of freedom, mak-
the shore of the Mediterranean. Gray’s lover, Jean ing a shelter that enabled a comfortable life beside
Badovici, an art dealer who also edited the journal the sea, but with the building making a minimal
L’Architecture vivante, encouraged Le Corbusier support for that life, not in the least taking on the
to paint murals in the house, which he did. Gray qualities of a monument or a sculpture.
found them overassertive, upsetting the harmo- Going back to the idea of designing around
nious balance of the interior, and this judgment habits: it is clear that Le Corbusier’s machine à
reflects their different approaches to architecture. habiter, insofar as it was being considered as a
She explained that her conception of the house machine for producing the conditions for life, was
was entirely different from Le Corbusier’s. For actually quite compatible with Gray’s ideas. Their
him the dwelling was a “machine à habiter,” which differences lay in what they saw as appropriate in
led him to look for ways to make houses take on the expression of what was happening in the house
the qualities of mechanical structures—airplanes, or, rather, which aspect of the house each thought
grain silos, ocean liners, and suchlike.11 Gray re- should count as “architecture.”
pudiated the idea: “A house is not a machine
à habiter. It is man’s shell, his continuation, his iv. organized beings
spreading out, his spiritual emanation. Not only
its sculptural harmony, but its whole organization, Le Corbusier defined architecture as “the mas-
every aspect of the whole work combined, come terful, correct, and magnificent play of volumes
together to make it human in the most profound brought together in light.”13 He praised the “engi-
sense.”12 neer’s aesthetic” and promoted it as an expression
In Butler’s conception of the organism, there of truth in construction. It was evident in bridges,
is a more developed sense of these ideas, but it airplanes, automobiles, and grain silos, and one
comes with problems, for example, because it is would look to the engineer for advice on how
difficult to imagine the volition that sets the pro- to construct, but the proper deployment and au-
cess in motion. Gray’s conception of the house is thoritative use of form is clearly the architect’s
identical but without the evolution. There is the province. It is plainly a visual aesthetic, sculptural
same sense of a blurring of the boundary of the and determined, and it has had wide currency.
46 The Aesthetics of Architecture

By contrast, Gray’s dictum remains underex- from life. For Le Corbusier, the architecture is in
posed, it being formulated in a private letter, not this volumetric play, but for Gray it manifestly was
trumpeted in a manifesto, though she is far from not.
being alone in thinking along those lines. It is
perhaps closer to the ad hoc of vernacular tra-
ditions, but making use of the new materials and v. forgetting
processes that the twentieth century brought her
way. She felt a need and, when she was design- Therefore the appropriate aesthetic response in
ing, closely analyzed the need, and then like ev- this frame of reference is not one that derives
ery other organism, made shift with the things from disinterested contemplation of forms, but

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available to her, which included traditional tech- one that derives from the satisfaction of experi-
niques—lacquer, leather, carved timber—as well as encing the building in everyday use—a pragmatist
tubular steel and experimental plastics. aesthetics. A house as a sequence of spaces and
It would be possible to describe Le Corbusier’s forms does not in itself have an ethical dimension,
buildings in these terms, and no doubt there was but the organized entity that is the dwelling-and-
an element of this kind of thinking in the work its-occupants certainly does. The “good house”
that he did, but he gave his account of architec- is inseparable from the “good life,” which the
ture along very different lines. His “poem of the building would be caught up in as a fundamen-
right angle,” for example, extols the purity and ra- tal support and shelter.15 The ideal rapport be-
tionality of pristine geometry, opposing it to the tween a dwelling and its occupants might be close
functional “way of the donkey,” where form is gen- enough that their ethos would find expression in
erated by muddling through expediently.14 Going it, whether in the grand design or in the detail.
back to Walter Benjamin’s ways of experiencing Beyond being a shelter, the dwelling is caught
architecture, Le Corbusier clearly gives priority up in our projects of self-invention that seem so
to sight, whereas by contrast Gray gives priority characteristic of the modern age, at least in fairly
to body and habit, grounding her sense of archi- affluent liberal democracies. There are premoni-
tecture in the life of the organism rather than in tions of it in Montaigne, but it is at its most heroic
the contemplation of pure and authoritative form. in Nietzsche and is made into a settled part of the
The organized being extends as far as it organizes. curriculum by John Dewey.16 We use our dwellings
The house is an extension of the person—actually to tell others, and ourselves, who we are and what
part of the organism. The house cannot be under- we aspire to be, and we do not use them in iso-
stood without the person. lation but in connection with our behavior, our
Curiously, it is in the aspect of the house as clothes, our patterns of speech, choice of music,
a machine that one would expect Gray and Le newspaper, or means of transport. These things
Corbusier to be in agreement if one has been are ingrained and habitual and are done or used or
reading Butler, for whom organic and inorganic reached for unself-consciously on any given day,
mechanisms were equally mechanical. For my pur- but they can be read gesturally. We would have
poses, however, the significant difference between no trouble in recognizing what kind of person was
them is how they conceptualize architecture. For going through the events in a story because of the
Le Corbusier the house as machine à habiter is things that a novelist or dramatist has that char-
a functioning mechanism, which belongs in the acter say and do, what clothes are worn, and in
world of function and engineering. What makes what surroundings the events unfold. I can see this
it architecture is altogether different: “the mas- very readily in other people, maybe very wrongly
terful, correct, and magnificent play of volumes (because often there is no way of checking), but
brought together in light.” It is when the machine it is not normally how I would see myself. Our
is contemplated that it is found to be architec- dwellings are complex in parallel ways. They are
ture, not when it is being used. By contrast, Gray’s instruments that help us to do both the things we
conception of the house as a continuation of its have to do—sleeping, refueling, washing—and also
inhabitants makes it inappropriate to judge it in various things that we can choose to do or not
Le Corbusier’s terms. To see the house as a play of to do. Houses are sometimes used to accumulate
volumes is to miss the point of the house: it sup- tokens of personal memories, objects of aesthetic
ports life, is imbued with life, and is inseparable interest, and things that we imagine will enhance
Ballantyne Architecture, Life, and Habit 47

our status in the eyes of the people we want to them, but to dwell on their aesthetic achievements
impress; they can be used to nurture friendships, in the presence of their utterly abhorrent reason
family, or career contacts. Often the things we do for being is to fail as a human being.18 The build-
with our houses blur or confound these categories, ings do not look remarkable, certainly not remark-
as the pleasures of entertaining are often insepa- ably evil, but then that could hardly have been the
rable from establishing status in society. There are designers’ intent. Few of us cast ourselves as vil-
so many things going on in a dwelling, at so many lains in our own lives. If we were able to visit these
levels, that it is a wonder we manage to keep ev- buildings as tourists, we might come away having
erything going. We do manage, however, and we taken photographs that looked quite pleasant. If
do it by establishing habits that persist and take we were to consider engaging in the building’s life,

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us along one trajectory of self-actualization or an- we would be overcome with revulsion. Sometimes
other. From time to time the trajectory may be a building’s aesthetics are not the most important
reviewed and adjusted, maybe gently, by learn- thing about it, and even to mention aesthetics as
ing to do something new or, maybe drastically, by an aspect of the building seems to show a lack
setting entirely new goals and deciding, in fact, to of judgment. A pragmatist aesthetics makes the
be a different person by deliberately adopting new “life” inescapable, so one need not cauterize moral
habits, inferring a new telos for the organizing that revulsion as inadmissible to aesthetic discourse.
I extend into my world. So for a dwelling—and by The occasions when we can securely make aes-
extension any building that I know through my thetic judgments about buildings in the absence
habits of engagement with it rather than as a vi- of “life” are when the building’s life has long van-
sual spectacle—a pragmatist aesthetics involves an ished. Therefore, for example, the ancient Colos-
engagement with the ethos of the place, and that is seum in Rome seems impressive without feeling
enabled by the building, but driven by the people morally dangerous, because the barbaric activities
who must not be separated from it. Insofar as the that it supported have long vanished. The prestige
judgment is aesthetic rather than ethical, it will of ancient monuments in our culture has made
consider the rapport between the dwelling and them the focus of much contemplation, but we
the life—the stronger the rapport, the better the should not derive a general theory from them, as
fit, the more aesthetically satisfying the achieve- they are special cases. The general theory should
ment. However, if the ethos is bad (however that come from the ordinary cases of everyday life and
judgment is made), then it would probably seem experience. In contemporary life, the Colosseum
to be an abdication of some wider responsibility is experienced through the tourist gaze, and one
to see as highly admirable a design that was con- spends more time in its cool vaults than in the
figured so as to support evildoing. The occasion scorching arena. A digital evocation of its heyday
when such design can be admired without moral is in circulation (in Ridley Scott’s film Gladiator),
problems arising is in the case of the design of but the building itself will not in any foreseeable
scenery for drama. A stage or film set can put in future be a support for gladiatorial bloodshed. It
place an idea of a room that is an aesthetically sat- is now a place from where horse-drawn carriage
isfying lair for a villain, expressing the malign per- rides begin and where ice creams are sold. The
sonality and its power through the décor. We can ethos of the modern life that surrounds it is driven
appreciate the effectiveness of the design without by benign leisure pursuits, an idea of cultural pres-
separating it from the (imagined) life and without tige, and the desire to maximize tourist revenue,
endorsing the evil. When the evil feels real, then not by bloodlust.
expressing enthusiasm for the skill of the design
can easily be misunderstood as endorsing the evil
and is impolitic. It is certainly safer to foster the vi. living architecture
idea that evil and kitsch keep company, and there
is some evidence to support that idea.17 There is Moving to a new house is notoriously one of
enough counterevidence to repudiate the case, but the most stressful events in a life, and part of
it is more challenging to make it. Robert van Pelt the reason for that is that it involves abandoning
has published the architects’ drawings for the gas the habits that attached to the earlier dwelling.
chambers at Auschwitz, which had organizational Hotels around the world that are aimed at the
rationality and compositional skill to recommend business community all have very similar facilities
48 The Aesthetics of Architecture

and spatial layouts, whether they are in New York ranks of the buildings that we appreciate by eye,
or Indonesia, whatever the indigenous architec- rather than by habit, and will therefore be judged
ture is like. It is a way to minimize the inconve- by a different set of values. If we go along with
nience involved in regular travel, but it also irons Gray and Butler in seeing the house as a part of
out the things that would give the particular places the organized being, then we should be looking
their distinct character. The negative side of habit for its effectiveness in promoting vitality and in
is that once patterns of behavior have worked their giving expression and support to the ethos of the
way into the unconscious, they can be difficult to place.
change.19 For as long as conditions continue with- For the category of “places that we come to
out need of serious change, the formation of habit know through habit,” the appropriate aesthetic

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is an advantage, as we can do more without hav- qualities have an ethical aspect.
ing to think about it. If we have good habits then To sum up, buildings can be contemplated as
we can continue to be good through habit, even artworks, and this article does not attempt to ar-
in the absence of actual virtuous intentions at a gue otherwise. Such contemplation, however, is a
given moment.20 If one is trying to design to ac- “special case” and is not remotely like the way
commodate anticipated behavior, then it can be a that one normally engages with buildings in ev-
comfort to know that one is designing for someone eryday circumstances. Aesthetic analysis is neces-
with fixed habits, whose movements can be antici- sarily contemplative in character, but if we are to
pated. But if circumstances change once habit has apprehend a building’s everyday character (as op-
taken a hold, then we might find it impossible to posed to its character for the tourist’s gaze), then
adapt. Where patterns of thought have settled into we need to understand it by way of the habits of ev-
place, we might find ourselves incapable of mak- eryday life. The building will support some habits,
ing mental leaps that are not part of our settled and might obstruct others, but crucially the thing
routine—reverting too readily to common sense that makes it satisfying is the match between the
or the repetition of ideas that have become dog- building and the life that goes on in and through
matic and therefore unable to come up with the it. The role of aesthetics can be to articulate an ap-
fresh insight that the new situation demands. The preciation of the fitness of the match between the
mental space that we have built for our thoughts place and the ethos, to see the building through the
then turns into a prison, but in its positive aspect it habits of daily life. By doing so, it becomes possible
is an architecture of our minds, while conversely, to see how the boundary between a space and its
the walls that frame our actions have the role of occupants can blur, so that the “organized being”
the unconscious.21 has an identity that extends beyond the organic
Without its inhabitants investing the dwelling body into its territory. The building is normally
with their ethos, the building becomes precisely not the focus of attention, but the thoroughly ha-
as lifeless as an empty shell, which is not without bituated background for life, which does not mean
interest—it can be used to decorative effect—but that it cannot be discussed, but does mean that it is
we can reasonably infer that it was not the mol- better understood if it is not discussed separately
lusk’s unconscious “reason” for making it. Eileen from the life. By making such a move, one claims
Gray moved on from her house in 1932 when she for aesthetics a viewpoint that can be that of an
left Badovici. He died in 1956, and the house has inhabitant of a building, rather than a tourist.
been little occupied since then. It has been in poor
repair, and its last owner, who sold the original
ANDREW BALLANTYNE
furniture, was murdered there in 1996.22 It might
School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape
soon be restored and opened to public view, but
Newcastle University
unoccupied it will not be the “architecture vivante”
Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, NE1 7RU
that it once sought to exemplify. Its siting and its
sculptural qualities will be admired, and a pattern internet: [Link]@[Link]
of life might be inferred from the traces that re-
main. However, the point of the house was the 1. Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of
Its Technological Reproducibility,” trans. Harry Zohn, in
life by the sea, and it is as if we were being invited vol. 4 of Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, 1938–1940, ed.
to admire the plinth of a sculpture or a painter’s Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings, 4 vols. (Harvard
easel. By then it will have been enlisted in the University Press, 2003), pp. 251–283, at p. 268.
Ballantyne Architecture, Life, and Habit 49

2. Ibid. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961), 6.421: “Ethics

3. Ibid. and aesthetics are one and the same.”
4. Juhani Palaasma, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture 16. Richard Shusterman, Pragmatist Aesthetics: Living
and the Senses, 2nd ed. (London: John Wiley and Sons, 2005). Beauty, Rethinking Art, 2nd ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman
5. Samuel Butler, Life and Habit, 2nd ed., ed. R. A. and Littlefield, 2000); Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony,
Streatfeild (London: A. C. Fifield, 1877; repr. London: Wild- and Solidarity (Cambridge University Press, 1989); Michel
wood House, 1981); and see Samuel Butler, “Quis Desiderio de Montaigne, Essais (1580), trans. M. A. Screech, The Com-
. . .?” in Universal Review, July 1888, repr. in Samuel But- plete Essays (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2003); Alexander
ler, Essays on Life, Art and Science, ed. R. A. Streatfeild Nehamas, Nietzsche: Life as Literature (Harvard University
(London: A. C. Fifield, 1908), pp. 2–3. Press, 1985); Alexander Nehamas, The Art of Living: So-
6. Samuel Butler, Evolution Old and New (London: cratic Reflections from Plato to Foucault (University of Cali-
Hardwick and Bogue, 1879); Samuel Butler, Unconscious fornia Press, 1998); John Dewey, Democracy and Education

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Memory (London: Hardwick and Bogue, 1880); Samuel But- (New York: Macmillan, 1916), chap. 22: “The Individual and
ler, Luck or Cunning as the Main Means of Organic Mod- the World,” pp. 291–305; and see Dewey on habit in John
ification (London: A. C. Fifield, 1886); Samuel Butler, The Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct (New York: Modern
Notebooks of Samuel Butler (London: A. C. Fifield, 1912; Library, 1922).
repr. London: Hogarth, 1985). See also Gregory Bateson, 17. Peter York, Dictators’ Homes: Lifestyles of the
Mind and Nature (London: Wildwood House, 1979). World’s Most Colourful Despots (London: Atlantic Books,
7. William Wordsworth, “The Rainbow” (1802), in 2005).
William Wordsworth, The Complete Poetical Works of 18. Robert Jan van Pelt, The Case for Auschwitz: Evi-
Wordsworth, ed. Thomas Hutchinson (London: Macmillan, dence from the Irving Trial (Indiana University Press, 2002).
1928), p. 62. 19. Catherine Malabou, “Preface” to Félix Ravaisson,
8. William Shakespeare, As You Like It, ed. Alan Bris- De l’habitude (1838), trans. Clare Carlisle and Mark Sin-
sendon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 2.7.139–166. Ref- clair, On Habit (New York: Continuum, 2008), pp. vii–xx,
erences are to act, scene, and line in the Brissendon edition. p. vii.
9. Butler, Life and Habit, p. 298. 20. Ravaisson, De l’habitude, p. 69.
10. Lia Addadi, Derk Joester, Fabio Nudelman, and 21. On the mental prison, see Axel Honneth, Reification:
Steve Weiner, “Mollusk Shell Formation: A Source of A New Look at an Old Idea (Oxford University Press, 2008).
New Concepts for Understanding Biomineralization Pro- See also Walter Benjamin, “Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth
cesses,” Chemistry: A European Journal 12 (2005): 980– Century,” trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin, in
987. Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project (1939; Harvard Uni-
11. Le Corbusier [Charles-Edouard Jeanneret], Vers une versity Press, 1999), p. 16; but Benjamin is appropriating a re-
architecture (Paris: Crès, 1928), trans. John Goodman as mark by Sigfried Giedion. See Irving Wohlfarth, “‘Construc-
Toward an Architecture (Los Angeles: Getty Foundation, tion Has the Role of the Subconscious’: Phantasmagorias of
2008). the Master Builder (with Constant Reference to Giedion,
12. Eileen Gray, quoted by Peter Adam, Eileen Gray: Weber, Nietzsche, Ibsen, and Benjamin),” in Nietzsche and
Architect/Designer (New York: Abrams, 1987, rev. ed. 2000) “An Architecture of Our Minds,” ed. Alexandre Kostka and
p. 309. I have retranslated the French original. Irving Wohlfarth (Los Angeles: Getty Foundation, 1999),
13. Le Corbusier, Toward an Architecture, p. 102. pp. 141–198.
14. Le Corbusier, Poëme de l’angle droit (Paris: Teriade, 22. For further information about Gray’s life and work,
1955); Le Corbusier, La Ville radieuse (Paris: Editions de see Adam, Eileen Gray; Caroline Constant, Eileen Gray
l’Architecture d’aujourd’hui, 1935). (London: Phaidon, 2000). The house at Roquebrune was
15. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico- named E1027, and information about it is readily found
Philosophicus, trans. D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness with a search engine.