The quadralectic philosophy was developed by the author – in 1985 – as a framework to understand the complexities of life. The search for a practical application was on when the source of a unifying context was found. I like to give credit to my teachers, but there are none. The terrain had to be discovered from scratch, like the first humans, who landed on the Moon. The performance was initially just as jumpy as those first explorers walking around in another field of gravity. Tetradic thinking, with its cyclic components and inherent subjectivity, has a complete different nature than the dualistic inspired endeavors of modern science.
A collection of illustrations related to the four-fold in the widest sense, known as the Documentary Illustrations, grew over the years to a collection of 14000 figures (July 2010). An exploratory book by the author called ‘Vier’ (Four) (1995) contained an architectural chapter, with an introduction to building and architecture from a tetradic point of view. But, in general, there were no predecessors to follow or tradition to build on.
This book will try to lead the interested reader into a landscape of familiar forms, seen from a different perspective. Historical and modern examples of architecture from all over the world are selected as possible examples of tetradic inspiration. Many of the monuments are placed in a spatial and temporary context in order to understand the intentions of their makers in a wider field. Nobody has ever approached architectural history in this way. It is, in that respect, a daring enterprise.
I admit that the proposals, as put forward in this book, can never prove the psychological setting of the ancient and modern builders. Interpretation is a subjective matter, based on analogies. The oppositional setting has been abandoned and replaced by a tetradic system of thought. The kernel of this procedure is a comparison applied in a four-fold way. This expansion might be hard to understand for people, who believe that reality is only present in the empirical part of the spectrum. Others, who are able to grasp the width of a quadralectic outlook, might be surprised by what this book holds in stock.
Quadralectic Architecture 