Pronunciation: 'är-k&-"tek-ch&r
Function: noun
1 : the art or science of building; specifically : the art or practice of designing and building structures and especially habitable ones
2 a : formation or construction as or as if as the result of conscious act <the architecture of the garden> b : a unifying or coherent form or structure <the novel lacks architecture>
3 : architectural product or work
4 : a method or style of building
5 : the manner in which the components of a computer or computer system are organized and integrated
majority of people had a belief in God, or some deity that defined the way the world was... these were constructs lets say..
these constructs manisted themselves visually via symbols, proportions, symmentry, etc.. it was a kind of a language that a person needed to learn..
after he learned that language he bacame an artist or architect who could speak that language with his works...
so, the artist defined the meaning of his work..
the constructs are still there, but the origin of them has changed..
majority believes in fractal accidents, chance.. that is the source of our constructs..
but there is no language to draw from these constructs..
so artist can't define what he is doing..
the viewer defines it for himself..
that's why we say that a cave is an architecture.. or a carboard box is architecture.. a dogpoop on the wall is art.. and etc..
intelligent people walk around the gallery looking at splatters of paint and trying to get something out of it..
is there (any longer) an intent behind a volute on an ionic column? do most of those who like a building that has them understand the intention?
meaning and intention are useful to designers - whether classical or other. they are stories we tell ourselves in order to move forward and maintain a rigor in development of a project.
most of us would agree that the final product must stand alone. maybe it provokes emotional response, maybe it has other jobs to do. my clients can find my work beautiful, useful, and conducive to a meaningful and rich occupation of space without knowing how i made all of my decisions. and this is also true of some more traditional buildings...
the argument is about the meaning of beauty..
the definition of beauty..
greeks measured and observed their environment and derived their system from it.. so they had a scientific approach to beauty..
but now in the age of science and progress, we are throwing the science and knowledge away..
our words are losing their meanings.
that's why people have a hard time defining what architecture is.
that's why we build blobs.
we are human beings, and we have a sense of beauty.. and we naturally are drawn to something that is beautiful..
and i am saying that the greeks had it right..
we have it wrong..
i think the farnsworth house is beautiful. i think fallingwater is beautiful. i think the salk institute is beautiful. could it be that there is room for more than one kind of beauty?
do you think the salk institute is a symbol of throwing science and knowledge away?
what words have lost their meanings? have they merely accrued more layers of meaning, maybe, as the languages become more sophisticated and intertwined?
i have yet to see any good definition of beauty which has the chutzpah to actually position itself as a 'right' answer. umberto eco just published an entire book assessing different philosophies of beauty over centuries. believe it or not, even prior to modernism, there were a variety of opinions about what constituted appropriate contemporary architecture and art. i expect those who held onto their greek traditions also abhorred what those horrible gothic, romanesque, and baroque architects were doing.
you are right about generational issues with every artform, we always dislike what was before.
However,
there are always some pieces that remain,
as worthy examples of that time.
And you listed some of them.
Were they picked randomly? Not at all!!
Beauty is a wide spectrum, but its not everything.
Architecture is a wide spectrum, but its not everything.
For most of its two thousand year history written architectural theory has centered around the question of beauty. Everyone from Albertti to Ruskin pondered what architectural beauty was and how to achieve it. Even during the heyday of modernism beauty was still a guiding concept - but loose aesthetic guidlines like "the machine", "speed" and "rationality" came to replace the beaux arts rules of symmetry and proportion.
Only more recently, as we've looked for direction in everything from literary theory to computer animation software, has the concept of beauty fallen in status. It's like architectural theorists haven't quite sobered up from the modernist binge and still want buildings to be part of some continuum of scientific progress.
Beauty is an emotion. All sorts of different environments, buildings or objects (let along stories, sounds and ideas) can trigger it. It can come be aesthetic or intellectual. Forms and surfaces can be beautiful. The ideas or stories implicit in an object or a place can be beautiful. The best architecture draws on both - it's aesthetically beautiful and intellectually interesting.
Artistic intent isn't necessary. You can find architectural beauty in anything, anywhere. It's all about being open to it.
I was walking around a port on a frozen river recently. It was a crisp, clear spring day. A dozen old, hard-worked ships were stuck in the ice waiting for the spring thaw. Overhead, tall red and green cranes made a web of dark lines against the blue sky. As the melting snow crunched and sloshed under my feet I took in the rusting hulls and decaying decks around me. I was struck by the beauty of the patterns of form and color in the pealing pant and rusting metal, and in the contrasts of light and dark, from the shadows of the hulls to the blinding whiteness of the river. My footsteps were the only sound breaking the silence. The pathos of the place was beautiful, what it implied. Here was the decay of industry - symbol of human power - halted, frozen, taken out of context. Here was the center of transport and activity for this small, northern city rendered useless by the climate. And the fact that THIS was the center of transport and activity for this city, this rusting cluster of barges, reminded me of the desperation and sadness of the whole region. Nothing could describe it more elloquenly or precisely than wandering among these ships frozen into the river.
antipod said a while back that architecture is about modifying your environment. I completely agree. It's about taking what's around us and shaping it so it sustains our health and stimulates our minds and emotions. But it needn't be drastic. Sometimes it's just a question of pointing out what's already there. The subtlest of interventions can have the most dramatic of architectural effects.
from a wonderful lecture by Alberto Perez-Gomez a few weeks ago:
"Beauty is a form of deeply shared cultural experience.
"Plato described our understanding of beauty as a fundamental a priori condition, a means of ascending toward truth. While we can’t KNOW the truth (the reason for the failing of various ‘ideal’ philosophies), our shared understandings of beauty give us the best glimpse/clue.
"Taste is local, historical, based on cultural norms – grounded, and therefore not necessarily related to beauty. Beauty appears in the artifacts of our multiple experiences. Beauty transcends the relationship/opposition of superfluity and necessity."
Our understandings of beauty can be based on nature, ideas, proportion, spirituality....
one throwaway question about the beauty of shelter and you're all over yourselves, sheesh. stand on beauty and someone will knock you over the head with the ugly stick.
beauty always says something, in fact, is beautiful for its particular mode of expression - its intensity, rythm, depth.. to start with beauty is to lose its point.
without an artistic or theoretical basis
Pronunciation: 'är-k&-"tek-ch&r
Function: noun
1 : the art or science of building; specifically : the art or practice of designing and building structures and especially habitable ones
2 a : formation or construction as or as if as the result of conscious act <the architecture of the garden> b : a unifying or coherent form or structure <the novel lacks architecture>
3 : architectural product or work
4 : a method or style of building
5 : the manner in which the components of a computer or computer system are organized and integrated
ohhhhh- it's a NOUN.....
ask Per, his work seems to lack both overall aethetic beauty and theoretical backing...
per corell, you gotta stand up for yourself
long ago.. seems like ages ago..
majority of people had a belief in God, or some deity that defined the way the world was... these were constructs lets say..
these constructs manisted themselves visually via symbols, proportions, symmentry, etc.. it was a kind of a language that a person needed to learn..
after he learned that language he bacame an artist or architect who could speak that language with his works...
so, the artist defined the meaning of his work..
the constructs are still there, but the origin of them has changed..
majority believes in fractal accidents, chance.. that is the source of our constructs..
but there is no language to draw from these constructs..
so artist can't define what he is doing..
the viewer defines it for himself..
that's why we say that a cave is an architecture.. or a carboard box is architecture.. a dogpoop on the wall is art.. and etc..
intelligent people walk around the gallery looking at splatters of paint and trying to get something out of it..
there is NOTHING THERE!!!
The Modernist vs. the Mystics
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/12/arts/design/12draw.html?
i am sure might be perceived as too extreme.. but i just taken to current trends to their logical conclusions..
i know there is intent in those splatters.. it is to provoke some kind of emotional response..
lets make an analogy..
meeeeaaaawwwwaaaaaboooooogoooooohoooooo..
how do you feel?
am i communicating something there,?
am i trying to say something?
you figure it out..
is there (any longer) an intent behind a volute on an ionic column? do most of those who like a building that has them understand the intention?
meaning and intention are useful to designers - whether classical or other. they are stories we tell ourselves in order to move forward and maintain a rigor in development of a project.
most of us would agree that the final product must stand alone. maybe it provokes emotional response, maybe it has other jobs to do. my clients can find my work beautiful, useful, and conducive to a meaningful and rich occupation of space without knowing how i made all of my decisions. and this is also true of some more traditional buildings...
the argument is about the meaning of beauty..
the definition of beauty..
greeks measured and observed their environment and derived their system from it.. so they had a scientific approach to beauty..
but now in the age of science and progress, we are throwing the science and knowledge away..
our words are losing their meanings.
that's why people have a hard time defining what architecture is.
that's why we build blobs.
we are human beings, and we have a sense of beauty.. and we naturally are drawn to something that is beautiful..
and i am saying that the greeks had it right..
we have it wrong..
i think the farnsworth house is beautiful. i think fallingwater is beautiful. i think the salk institute is beautiful. could it be that there is room for more than one kind of beauty?
do you think the salk institute is a symbol of throwing science and knowledge away?
what words have lost their meanings? have they merely accrued more layers of meaning, maybe, as the languages become more sophisticated and intertwined?
i have yet to see any good definition of beauty which has the chutzpah to actually position itself as a 'right' answer. umberto eco just published an entire book assessing different philosophies of beauty over centuries. believe it or not, even prior to modernism, there were a variety of opinions about what constituted appropriate contemporary architecture and art. i expect those who held onto their greek traditions also abhorred what those horrible gothic, romanesque, and baroque architects were doing.
you are right about generational issues with every artform, we always dislike what was before.
However,
there are always some pieces that remain,
as worthy examples of that time.
And you listed some of them.
Were they picked randomly? Not at all!!
Beauty is a wide spectrum, but its not everything.
Architecture is a wide spectrum, but its not everything.
For most of its two thousand year history written architectural theory has centered around the question of beauty. Everyone from Albertti to Ruskin pondered what architectural beauty was and how to achieve it. Even during the heyday of modernism beauty was still a guiding concept - but loose aesthetic guidlines like "the machine", "speed" and "rationality" came to replace the beaux arts rules of symmetry and proportion.
Only more recently, as we've looked for direction in everything from literary theory to computer animation software, has the concept of beauty fallen in status. It's like architectural theorists haven't quite sobered up from the modernist binge and still want buildings to be part of some continuum of scientific progress.
Beauty is an emotion. All sorts of different environments, buildings or objects (let along stories, sounds and ideas) can trigger it. It can come be aesthetic or intellectual. Forms and surfaces can be beautiful. The ideas or stories implicit in an object or a place can be beautiful. The best architecture draws on both - it's aesthetically beautiful and intellectually interesting.
Artistic intent isn't necessary. You can find architectural beauty in anything, anywhere. It's all about being open to it.
I was walking around a port on a frozen river recently. It was a crisp, clear spring day. A dozen old, hard-worked ships were stuck in the ice waiting for the spring thaw. Overhead, tall red and green cranes made a web of dark lines against the blue sky. As the melting snow crunched and sloshed under my feet I took in the rusting hulls and decaying decks around me. I was struck by the beauty of the patterns of form and color in the pealing pant and rusting metal, and in the contrasts of light and dark, from the shadows of the hulls to the blinding whiteness of the river. My footsteps were the only sound breaking the silence. The pathos of the place was beautiful, what it implied. Here was the decay of industry - symbol of human power - halted, frozen, taken out of context. Here was the center of transport and activity for this small, northern city rendered useless by the climate. And the fact that THIS was the center of transport and activity for this city, this rusting cluster of barges, reminded me of the desperation and sadness of the whole region. Nothing could describe it more elloquenly or precisely than wandering among these ships frozen into the river.
antipod said a while back that architecture is about modifying your environment. I completely agree. It's about taking what's around us and shaping it so it sustains our health and stimulates our minds and emotions. But it needn't be drastic. Sometimes it's just a question of pointing out what's already there. The subtlest of interventions can have the most dramatic of architectural effects.
beauty is derived from nature..
lets take gehry for example, his 2 most famous projects are the museum at bilbao and disney concert hall.
bilbao projects looks like a japanese flower arrangement..
his disney hall was inspired by a basket of roses...
greek column are essentially an abstraction of trees, trunk and foliage
the cars of the 60's were inspired by the curves of a female body..
My friend Dave dreamt that he was a building the other day.
did he have tenants?
beauty is SOMETIMES derived from nature...
from a wonderful lecture by Alberto Perez-Gomez a few weeks ago:
"Beauty is a form of deeply shared cultural experience.
"Plato described our understanding of beauty as a fundamental a priori condition, a means of ascending toward truth. While we can’t KNOW the truth (the reason for the failing of various ‘ideal’ philosophies), our shared understandings of beauty give us the best glimpse/clue.
"Taste is local, historical, based on cultural norms – grounded, and therefore not necessarily related to beauty. Beauty appears in the artifacts of our multiple experiences. Beauty transcends the relationship/opposition of superfluity and necessity."
Our understandings of beauty can be based on nature, ideas, proportion, spirituality....
Not sure pasha, will ask him soon.
one throwaway question about the beauty of shelter and you're all over yourselves, sheesh. stand on beauty and someone will knock you over the head with the ugly stick.
beauty always says something, in fact, is beautiful for its particular mode of expression - its intensity, rythm, depth.. to start with beauty is to lose its point.
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