This paper will proceed, via a brief discussion of Hans-Georg Gadamer�s anti-aesthetics of architecture, to outline why the architectural metaphor in philosophy is never simply a metaphor, using as a guide the critique of origins and sources contained in Jacques Derrida�s essay Qual Quelle. The question will be raised as to whether the tools and structures of philosophy, such as the difference between materiality and non-materiality, abstract thought and practice, are entirely adequate to architectural debate; and whether, in questioning these structures, it is possible to address Bataille�s critique of architecture (as interpreted in Denis Hollier�s Against Architecture) as the expression of pre-existing social order and power
