Wittgensteins House: Language, Space, and Architecture by Associate Professor Nana Last

Wittgensteins House: Language, Space, and Architecture Reviews

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  Marvin McConoughey

  This is an excellent story of the house that sometime philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein designed for his sister. It is one of three books that I have read about Ludwig Wittgenstein the person, as contrasted to a greater number of books on his philosophy. The house was begun by a professional architect, a family friend and a personal friend of Ludwig. Ludwig, known for his determination took over design responsibility and thereafter exerted complete, sometimes excessive, control. The house itself is pictured in bleak black and white photographs that very possibly fail to convey the sense of the house as it was experienced and lived in by Ludwig's sister. The book is of primary interest for those who study Ludwig Wittgenstein and for those, like this reviewer, who are interested in architecture. I give the book four stars because the pictures and their reproduction are no better than average quality, and because the author, in my view which is based on other reading, was not fully objective in her understanding of the central people involved and of the house itself.