Building with Biophilia: An Interview with Nikos Salingaros

Damien François
Speaking for the reconstruction of Parliament's bombed-out Commons Chamber, Winston Churchill famously quipped, “We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.” But how? And should we care? Is it not all rather a matter of taste? Philosopher Damien François interviews architectural theorist Nikos Salingaros, who believes that the art of building is anything but arbitrary: our built environment matters deeply for our attitudes, our aims, our very bodies. Neither a ‘modernist’ nor a ‘traditionalist’, Salingaros is as much a champion of the field’s historical vernaculars as he is of new possibilities afforded by contemporary empirical discoveries in biomathematics. His intellectual eclecticism, his passion for humane urbanism, and his compelling alternatives to stale orthodoxies make him one of the most exciting theorists active today.

Europe: ‘Too old for its own truths and victories’?

Rémi Brague

Today's West is concerned with 'sustainability' almost to the point of obsession: of resources, of companies, of cars, of vacations. But Europe, argues one of its leading thinkers, finds itself in the middle of a centuries-old experiment that puts the sustainability of not only its own existence but that of all mankind on the line. How did we get here? And do we have the metaphysical goods to get ourselves out?
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‘I Make All Things New’: Reflections on Time in The Brothers Karamazov

Samuel McClelland Our poems, songs, and tales give us a sense that there is continuity in history and that we fit into it. But what sort of continuity? And what, if anything, should we do about it? In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky grapples with some of the most compelling meta-narratives that have ever shaped our experience of life as temporal beings.