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Shape and Form

how do you define each ?

I think these are beginning to be used differently from before ,, am interested to see if there's differences in definitions.....

for my part - i suppose i always thought of form as 3d , and shape as 2d .. however this seems to be laughably restricted and maybe just incorrect?!


 
Dec 10, 08 4:24 am
nappy

there's shape in form and form in shape.

All form can be defined by a series of shapes...

So I guess shape is a sort of nodal condition...where you cannot really have form without shape.

But then again...some would argue that shape is form.

But i guess your definition is close..a 2d shape or a 3d shape. Or a 2d form vs. a 3d form. It helps me make it more clear when I use the terms form and shape interchangeably.

Dec 10, 08 7:05 am  · 
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PsyArch

I tend to talk about shape-in-plan, and shape-in-elevation, the combination of which is form.

Dec 10, 08 10:05 am  · 
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peridotbritches

I use shape a 2 dimensional term and form as a 3 dimensional term.

Dec 10, 08 12:17 pm  · 
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Emilio

one new year's eve i met a woman with amazing form but i was in no shape to take advantage of the situation...

Dec 10, 08 12:58 pm  · 
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fays.panda

ur almost correct, as in, thats how most ppl use it, and its safe to do that... although its a much more complex issue, especially if u get into painting, scultpure, typography parts/whole, gestalt,, etc..

for example, you create forms through type, but, its still in 2d

Dec 10, 08 1:09 pm  · 
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Carl Douglas (agfa8x)

the basic difference is that while 'shape' generally means the configuration of contours or outline, 'form' has distinct philosophical connotations running back at least to Plato.

for Plato, forms were not shapes, but the essential divine patterns of things. the mutable world was a degenerated tracing of these ideal immutable forms. Aristotle reconceived forms as a kind of average. contemporary morphogeneticists think on terms of processes of formation rather than platonic form. when 'form' is used in theoretical discourse, it tends to have these kind of connotations. this isn't exclusive, though - in conversation, 'form' and 'shape' are typically treated as synonyms.

Dec 10, 08 2:15 pm  · 
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form
shape
Dec 10, 08 3:36 pm  · 
 · 
c

during studio reviews i notice classmates and professors - with very few exceptions - using the words almost interchangebley - for some reason i find it distressing .... perhaps becasue i find it utlimately does them/us a disservice , eroding the prescision or the potential prescision of a discussion - itself an often tenuous thing..
while form and shape exist as such independent of their names , maybe we are loosing the ablility to really engage them if we can't identify them properly .. . imagine a doctor mixing up his words ! disastrous . . !

i think i still have to work on accepting the fact that 90% of archispeak is deliberately yet unconciously obfuscatory ... and hell i wish i could write that simply. . .

Dec 10, 08 5:08 pm  · 
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PsyArch

For a very visual (wordless) discussion of form, check out siteless. It's genius

Dec 10, 08 6:42 pm  · 
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binary

the only difference is 'extrude'

Dec 10, 08 10:36 pm  · 
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This is jargon. When you hear these terms used in opposition, think 'jargon'.

Basically, shape is iconic, quick, and easy - form is subtle, complex, and difficult.

Look up Bob Somol's article in OMA/AMO's Content: "12 Reasons to get back into Shape".

All you really need to know is that triangles are better than circles.

Dec 10, 08 11:00 pm  · 
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Personally, I would say form is qualitative while shape is quantative.

So I guess similar to what agfa said...form as an average - an impression of the thing; shape being the configuration or the defined physical presence of the thing.

Dec 10, 08 11:09 pm  · 
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shape is a 2d reference, a means to define the perimeter of an object's projection - for a euclidean reference usually in 3 dimensions

Dec 10, 08 11:39 pm  · 
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Carl Douglas (agfa8x)

i disagree. you can have a three-dimensional shape, or a two-dimensional form. imho.

Dec 10, 08 11:47 pm  · 
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binary

. <---- thats a dot
dot <---- this is the word .

Dec 11, 08 12:03 am  · 
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aspect

the shape is formed by the skin

the form is formed by the volume

Dec 11, 08 12:10 am  · 
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aspect

but in reality, everything is just a shade.

Dec 11, 08 12:12 am  · 
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binary

lighter shade of bown

Dec 11, 08 12:34 am  · 
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A Center for Ants?

i've always regarded form more of a overarching descriptor of the physical manifestation of the object/building in question while shape is more geometrically explicit. so as to say that shape is a more specific subset of form.

Dec 11, 08 5:33 am  · 
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aspect

the shape describe a figure.

the form describe a volume.

Dec 11, 08 9:52 am  · 
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peridotbritches

Interesting positions, the lot of you.

Dec 11, 08 5:19 pm  · 
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A hot air balloon shaped as a birthday cake flies above the Swiss Alps resort of Chateau d'Oex 19 January 2008 at the opening day of the 30th International Ballon Festival. The mondial capital of the hot air ballon in the alpin area welcome 80 ballons and 10 special shapes coming from 20 different country.

"It's floating in such fine form."

Dec 11, 08 6:06 pm  · 
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Those candles are a fire hazard.

Dec 11, 08 6:10 pm  · 
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dia

I back agfa8x...

Dec 11, 08 6:20 pm  · 
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chatter of clouds

Now i'm wondering about the diffence between metamorphosis and shape-shifting. The allowance for reversibility, flickering realities, lack of inherent nature, quick, painless and opportunistic (hence somol's preference?) ,deceiving.

Dec 11, 08 6:22 pm  · 
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eigenvectors

agfa8x covered it...

inherent nature can only be controlled by the object of nature that has inherited it's (own) nature. there is no inherent nature that can be perceived outside yourself. when you make yourself communicable to others, when you enter the river of discourse, you convey your objective reality subjectively. by subjectively, you re-interpret the flow of the river to express your inherent nature.

perhaps deceiving is a preference, because it is really an acceptance that metamorphosis and nature outside oneself can not be controlled, because you only know the others nature via their subjective expression of it(them)selves.

deceiving is really the subject(I) acting objectively. you gloss the shape-shifting with concepts of "inherent nature". occasionally an unexplained infant like experience by (an)other can only be explained by your words..hence they nod their heads in agreement...

and you both feel to be flowing down the river of discourse together...

you've been deceived.



Dec 11, 08 9:49 pm  · 
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When it comes to mythical origins and first ideal forms, it is worthwhile to ask if the mythical origins and the first ideal forms are themselves reenactments. For example, the manifestation of Shiva reenacts metabolism. Moreover, might not Plato's ideal forms [like his Socratic dialogues] also be reenactments (albeit highly abstracted)? Perhaps Plato's perfect circle 'ideally' reenacts the pupils of our eyes and Plato's perfect triangle 'ideally' reenacts the nose on our face.

Perhaps all abstractions are highly idealized reenactments of reality, rather than reality being a reenactment of highly idealized abstractions.
2000.02.18

Dec 12, 08 1:30 pm  · 
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eCoDe

form is dynamic; shape is static.

When you see a fountain where the water follow the flow and gravity to become an arch or an apple, you would say this is FORMation. (think inFORMation, deFORMation, and Cecil's book inFORMal)

While shape is a term refers to the consequence or termination of the process of "FORMation". Either you say the shape is triangle, or cubical, you are mentioning the final (or keypoint) status of a natural or artificial process. It is stillized.

Dec 12, 08 2:19 pm  · 
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chatter of clouds

re: reenactment and the "degrees of seperation"


bridges between bridges, gaps amongst the gaps

the 1- automorphic: in itself a bridge between self (the conscious monad) and all things(subordinate monads).

to 2- anthropomorphic: a circuitous bridge between self, all things, and then arriving back to the self. the self that conceives of all things conceived as the self. the self as both the first-person and the third, the world as the second person and the first.

and lastly the traffic between things: 3- the archeomorphic

five nominal (that is, fantastical) bridges altogether. it is not strange then then that the freudian triadic imagination, as Lauf notes, are classified in ascending degrees of abstraction (id, ego, super ego). But whenever a 'science' is establishing itself, it doesn't always establish the principles of its very own imagination (i.e. a self-folding science). i will need to reread this now, what i write, to determine what imagination i'm a victim of.



Dec 13, 08 4:01 am  · 
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chatter of clouds

i checked the etymologies online and surprisingly the proto-germanic root of shape and the ancient greek roof of form semantically largely overlap except for an interesting idiosyncrasy in shape's travelogue through Middle English whereby it also means "the contours of the body" and could be used to mean "a woman's private parts". perhaps this explains why shape holds a more phsyically ingranined and immediate nuance (a physio-visual tracing) relating it to the corresponding body. this also might explain why the contemporary western imagination, in its championing of the ideal over the corporeal and the mentally conceived over the visually perceived (their cultural progenitors, the greeks, situated light in the eye thus making vision the mind's light emanating and shining on things), finds "shape" more suspicious and more prone to deception. trust the germans to be more dirty minded than the greeks.

Dec 13, 08 4:27 am  · 
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noctilucent, split framing, diptych, book seam, (who I enjoy seeing in 30 Rock [paper, scissors?]).

As to reenactment and 'degrees of separation', further pursuance will occur with regard to degrees of separation opposed to split and with regard to cloning.

[e. e. cummings full circle,] Louis Sullivan's form follows function argued against architecture's form having become too removed from its function--banks shouldn't look like ancient temples; bankers don't wear togas. When Sullivan was in Philadelphia working at Frank Furness' office, 1872-73, it was on the same block as, if not right across the street from, William Strickland's Second Bank of the United States, with very severe Doric temple fronts, 1819-24. Strickland's Philadelphia architecture was meant to represent the United States as the new democracy, thus emulating (reenacting) the architecture of the old democracy of ancient Greece. Note, however, the similarity of the contemporaneous works of Strickland and Schinkel point to other factors also being present within the formulation of Strickland's style, likely the influence of the "Grand Durand" [degree].

As it stands, the
Second Bank of the United States
is made of
King of Prussia(n blue) marble.

actually, the columns are crumbling due to having been originally hewn incorrectly.

"You mean form does not following when hewn incorrectly?!?"

Dec 14, 08 10:40 am  · 
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