rationalskepticism.org

What is it to talk of prosthesishere in architecturaldis- course?Or, rather,what is it to talkof it again, for was not modern architecturesimply the thought of architectureas prosthesis?Displaced from artificeinto the artificial,archi- tecture became a technological extension of the body that is neither natural nor cultural. Modern architectureis the space of the artificial. As Le Corbusier argues

We all need means of supplementing our natural capabilities, since natureis indifferent,inhuman (extra-human),and incle- ment;wearebornnakedandwithinsufficientarmor.. . . The barrelof Diogenes, alreadya notable improvementon our natural protectiveorgans(our skin and scalp), gave us the primordialcell of the house; filing cabinets and copy-lettersmake good the inad- equacies of our memory;wardrobesand sideboardsare the con- tainers in which we put away the auxiliarylimbs that guarantee us againstcold or heat, hunger or thirst. . . . Our concern is
with the mechanical system that surroundsus, which is no more
than an extension of our limbs; its elements, in fact, artificial limbs.

This concern with buildings as "human-limbobjects"worn like clothing would even become as literalas Gideon's identificationof the nineteenth-centuryinterestin "the problem ..