Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject Art - Architecture / History of Construction, grade: 2, University of Constance, course:, language: English, abstract: The issue of the second discussion in Darmstadt was set under the title Mensch und Raum (Man and Space) August 5th, 1951. The lecture, which was presented by Martin Heidegger called Building - Dwelling - Thinking. This lecture will obtain the most important interest in this paper. The main intention is to understand what Martin Heidegger meant with his philosophical approach towards architecture and also trying to see what is the purpose of architecture. The art of architecture with its enigma will be enlightened or will be still a mystery. To look for hints and statements in several sources will hopefully help us to find a way or at least will let us understand. The aim towards this goal at first is to explain the most important terms, which Martin Heidegger is using. Especially with Martin Heidegger it will be important to know, what kind of language he is using and what is behind the terms he using in his descriptions. An other point which makes it important to deal with, will be the problem that we have two disciplines: philosophy and architecture, we know that the use of certain terms can be different in these cases, so similar than Martin Heidegger was doing it in his work Building - Dwelling - Thinking, there will be an explanation of the important terms. The second part will deal with the explanation and the understanding of the enigma we worked on trough this paper. If it will be possible to understand or will it be to abstract to explain in such a short work. For the fact, that the lecture was presented more than 50 years ago and for an amount of time almost nobody was interested in this work, it became more and more important in the last decades, especially in the theoretical architecture, as well as in philosophy and art itself. Therefore the main resources are based on articles, writings about Martin Heidegger and his own writings. By the end we will hopefully understand the idea of Building - Dwelling - Thinking and how Martin Heidegger thought about architecture as a way of being and dwelling.