| This thesis traces the development of Paul Virilio's humanism and examines its ultimate expression in his architectural work from the mid-1960s. Born out of his firsthand experience as a 'blitzkrieg baby' in occupied Nantes during World War II, Virilio's contempt toward the dehumanizing characteristics of total war and the perpetuation of 'aesthetics of Auschwitz' fueled his resistance of architecture that contributed to the 'disappearance' of the body in postwar aesthetic culture. His work in collaboration with the Architecture Principe group manifested this resistance through a 'reprocessing' of his memories of surviving the devastation of his home and of his archeology of the 'unoccupied' Atlantic Wall ruins. Virilio's exploration of anti-form, drawn from these experiences, was both a means of 'working through' what he saw during the war and a prescription for an architectural environment that would call others to 'face up' to painful memories of the past.;His architecture as such demands to be discussed alongside Theodor Adorno's aesthetic theory; Virilio's work protests the silencing of 'tortured bodies'. His humanistic approach to the organization of the built environment reveals a radical approach to representing and reversing the aesthetics of Auschwitz. His architecture, both inspired by and severely critical of aesthetic symbols of the Nazi reign, evokes the scream. |
