Architecture may be earlier because the earth was built by man.
Just as it is a manifestation of his needs. Man’s need was linked to the idea of using things or using them for his service. Man’s thought in its simplicity and complexity is the one who is in control of the material to serve him.
There is a correlation between man and architecture, which requires the definition of man?
Man is that being who searches for information in order to organize it and is distinguished by his obtaining knowledge and his ability to choose from other living things.
A challenging question. Following for the moment.
In my opinion, architecture came to respond to one or more uses that all living beings inhabiting the planet (Man, plants / vegetation and animals) put to good use. The proof is that ancient civilizations were inspired by the living environment or (habitats) of plants and animals to intelligently copy in order to achieve them. The correlation between these two dimensions is in the creative spirit which in turn generates innovation and unprecedented possibilities to invent new uses never thought of before ... So, architecture is this way and way of organizing , to organize, organize and anticipate our expectations, needs and aspirations in order to reflect on the ways and manners of being, of doing and of living the future.
"The very architecture of inhabiting it is that humans escape from the impurities and nuisances that surround them ..." . Lazri Youcef
Architecture in it's purest form is nature itself. All landscapes, all of nature was created by its own hand without man. Man just coexists with it, gathers information based on senses and creates another type of architecture customized for ones needs.
It's a nice question and a hard problem to think about. But, I am not sure if I agree with the premisse (i.e. I don't think architecture and man can be taken as independent entities).
Furthermore, it depends on how you understand architecture, as a discipline and profession (wich are modern phenomena), or as wider cultural phenomena (which goes back in time and across cultures). I gues is this last meaning you take.
If we take Tim Taylor's archeological anthropology approach, technical transformation of the environment comes before the first homo sapiens. Homo habilis controled fire and imagine the impact of heating in habitat change, which also had impact in our nature (e.g. loss of bodyhair). And even evidence for first stone tools comes quite a few milenia before the first genus Homo. In this sense, and in parallel, it don't make sense to apprach "man" and "woman" as "entities", because they are rather historical processes (in the course of some milenia).
The approach to "need" can also be problematized. I rather like thinking it as "desire". We actually don't need to change so much the environment (to the edge point of a global collapse). It is mainly a culturally build desire, which is nowadays a clear neoliberal subjectivity of control, consumerism and individualism (all of that are historical processes, and not essences or substances).
The second question comes to the point. To define architecture and man is an ethical and political issue. It sets us in relation to each other, and creates a conception of how we see the world and our capacity to act upon it. I see in that a dialectical connection between architecture, humankind, nature and how we conceive them. I.e. there is an issue of political aesthetics implicity in your question (here I am thinking of Jacques Rancière).
Or as Marcuse would put it, to even say that "Man is rational" is rather an advocacy: "man should be understood as rational". And at the same time this is an ethical choice (how should we be?) and a political problem (as it ignores all the times mankind is barbaric). The same issue can be set when we think of architecture: what are the ethical and political problems that emerge when we think of a definition of architecture? What are its concequences (enviromentally and socially) and there are other ways of thinking that would take us out of the civilization mess we are currently in? That is what makes me wonder when I put my son to sleep every night... I hope it adds something to your wondering too...
Cordially, Camilo
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