Abbau-unbuilding

In this paper we read across two texts by Martin Heidegger, firstly, \"Building, Dwelling, Thinking\", delivered as a lecture in 19 51, and secondly, a lecture from 1941, \"Valuation\" delivered in the context of a Heidegger lecture series on the philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche. \"Building, Dwelling, Thinking\" is a well known Heidegger essay, much discussed in architectural theory for its reference to notions of building and dwelling, although Heidegger's discussion of building is more fundamental in its questioning than what we generally think of as building. This is important to grasp, for just as we may discuss culture with respect to its values and technologies in connection with its many modes of 'housing' or construction, so we need to recognise in Heidegger's more fundamental questioning of building and dwelling how he is, as well, questioning something fundamental to cultural valuation and our processes of cultural construction, and their modes or technologies of building. From this dose reading of \"Building, Dwelling, Thinking\", the paper activates the earlier text by Heidegger on his reading of Nietzsche's notion of 'nihilism' as the fundamental disclosure of Being: will-to-power as revaluation of the highest values. In developing an understanding of Heidegger's important 'meditation' on Nietzsche for his own questioning of contemporary culture, we may get a sense of the extent to which \"Building, Dwelling, Thinking\" may offer a radical approach to an overcoming of nihilism, where nihilism is recognised as the ground or principle for our ongoing projections of culture, value and technology.