THE ARCHITECTURAL THEORY BEFORE AND AFTER KANT IN THE INTERSECTION OF THE PHILOSOPHY AND ARCHITECTURE

With the philosophical system he established, Kant has become one of the leading actors that need to be reckoned, overcome, and expounded in the history of philosophy, especially since the end of the 19th century. Kant's significance for Architectural Theory is not only due to his profound influence on 20th Century Western Philosophy. Kant's centricity is maybe due to creating his critical philosophy through synthesising European Continental Rationalism and Anglo-Saxon Empiricism in the Western Philosophy Tradition that precedes before him and underlining the limitations of our knowledge by questioning the preceding Western metaphysics and reversing of some its concepts and principles. Kant's approach found its most competent expression in Neo-Kantian philosophy, and the legacy left by Neo-Kantians played a central role in the formation of 20th-century philosophical approaches. In this context, Neo-Kantians paved the way for the analysis of the ontological character of architectural works within different epistemological constructs, and consequently the theoretical and philosophical character of architectural knowledge. Based on this idea, it is possible to divide the epistemological approaches produced in the field of architecture into two as before and after Kant. The aim of this essay is to underline the importance of Kant's philosophy in terms of architectural theory and philosophy, along with its influence on its contemporary architectural theorists, why it is still valid currently. This article follows a theoretical approach as a method to decipher the storyline of the architectural theory before and after Kant. As the article shows Kant is an important figure not only in western philosophy but also in the development of architectural theory thinking.