What Do You ThInk About Architecture?

[csintexas]

Without criticizing any others ideas write what you think about architecture. What would the ideal world look like? How should we create architecture? Etc..

For example: "I think.....(whatever you want to say)" -but without refering to any previous post.

[csintexas]

I will start with my functionalist philosophy. This is not a complete work and I reserve the right to change my mind.


Can we all agree that architecture should be moral?

Why did Vitruvius say that there where three legs to architecture?

(I think it was because he was musically oriented)

Architecture has many aspects and there is no need to group them. Above all, buildings should be moral.

I don't know if there is a God but I do know that we should be moral. That means our buildings should be moral as well because they are a reflection of us.

I think of morality as a human thing. When I think of buildings being moral I think of them as being functional.

Nothing should come between a building and morality. Remember that for the sake of this argument, morality means the same thing as function.

Nothing is more important than function in architecture.

If there is a God surely God would want us to be beautiful people. So to should we want our buildings to be beautiful. Our buildings and our built environment are a reflection of ourselves.

I am using the word function in a catch all way. Maybe there is a better word for it.

We could also say architecture should be virtuous or we could say that we should work towards an ideal architecture.

We know that we should not build an environment that causes ourselves or future people hardship either through debt, poor use of natural resources, climate changes or poor social or physical health.

These are our responsibilities as people who create the built environment. So any architecture we create needs to be towards that ideal.

These ideal aspects I might call a buildings higher functions.

Then we have utility. A building has a job to do. It has a function. Would we cheer our local sports team if they allowed themselves to become out of shape and unfit for their purpose? A building also should perform its job as well as possible.

Beauty is always a part of that function. In fact we may design buildings who’s primary purpose is beauty.

Does beauty flow naturally from function? Maybe function flows naturaly from beauty? Since they are really both the same thing it does not matter.

Too not work well is to not function well. An ugly and or cheap building does not really work well. Ugly buildings make us feel bad. They cheapen society. Ugly buildings tend to be un-cared for. In other words people are more likely to let an ugly building's roof leak than a beautiful building's roof.

Fortunately beauty and utility are not exclusive of each other. They should work together in everything we design.

In most buildings one should not hinder the other. If we allow utility to harm beauty or beauty to harm utility the building suffers.

Art and beauty are not the same thing. Art is about creativity. Beauty is about aesthetics.

There is certainly art in the way a building is created but architecture is not art. Art may and should be incorporated as elements of a building but the building should also be beautiful without those elements.

We should think of beauty in buildings the same way we think of beauty in people. There are two kinds of beauty. Inner beauty and outer beauty. Inner beauty has to do with morality and virtue. Outer beauty has to do with an aesthetic judgement based on a societies preference to some degree but we can say that there are certain aspects of human beauty that the average human would agree on.

Without inner beauty (morality) (function) architecture is only style. We may design classic, modern, blob or whatever. Regardless of the style of a building it is its inner beauty which differentiate a good building from a bad building.

A beautiful building has to be true to our ideals or it can not be truly beautiful. That does not mean bad buildings do not have any virtues. Most all buildings have some admirable qualities, but we can not judge the quality of a building by it's outward appearance. Just by looking at a buildings appearance all we can say is that we either like the way it looks or we do not.

Since we know that outer beauty is in the eye of the beholder outer beauty is not a good indicator of the quality of a building. To accurately judge the quality of a building takes careful study. A building may have outer beauty which we do not prefer but still have an abundance of inner beauty or the opposite may be true.

According to my own philosophy I can say that I have never created very good architecture but having goals gives us something to work towards. Knowing the difference between what is important and what is superficial allows us to more accurately judge architecture.

With my philosophy I can consider more than wether any building is just grand, impressive, beautiful, creative or whatever. I feel that it gives me a compass which will help guide me towards better architecture.

[Surface to Air]

great topic, but honestly, I don't think I have the time since I need to be asleep soon! and the fact that I really don't have a solid philosophy yet... or will I ever? I have an idea about what architecture should be for me, but there are things that I disagree with in my own philosophies... why should my idea be more important than the idea of the average person... the people who are really going to use the building. architecture is so different from the architect's view. I always love watching a design crit and hearing someone say "the people WILL _______ _________ _______." it just humors me b/c you know that people are unpredictable and will do as they want... sure, putting a column in the middle of a circulation path will give you the control, as an architect, to move people in ways you want, but is that really a good thing? with the little knowledge I have, I see that it is more of a piss off than anything else. maybe tomorrow I can try to bring all my ideas together in one... but maybe it will be in 10 yrs!

[Kevin]

Chris, I think maybe you were supposed to state your philosophy without criticizing others in the forum? I think some wise person put that into the rules for this thread...

[P.C.]

Architecture must never forget the future, how it came to what is there the core drive and what was delivered in terms of side effects.

Architecture must deliver the new architecture aswell as the proven beauty the promises of tomorrow , the new jobs the new manufactoring ,architecture must never say "this is now we build a house".

Architecture must strive towerds fiction but not without a quality core buildings must be for people ,cutting edge innovative design must be to produce the family house rather than the spetacular Museum, only then the new jobs a new understanding about the structure of the build works, the progress and new and true digital manufactoring will offer tools to deliver wonders. Make jobs and factories for the new young architects to provide humble homes and a new architecture based on detail quality.

[csintexas]

[am_i_wry]

The question of philosophy is an interesting one in relation to practice. One may have grand notions but very often the business of doing business means that as isms go pragmatism is more important than functionalism ore deconstructionism or classicism or whatever. There are so many competing forces that work both for and against you in the process of creating a building that one can never entirely control or predict what the outcome will be and always strictly apply dogma to it. It is a rare architect who can pick and choose what he does to such an extent that he can control enough of the process to allow his work to be a theoretical and philosophical exploration.

To that end i find having a concept of and understanding of process (even a philosophy) is the key thing. Style is significantly less important. It is influenced by context, client, planners and budget. What is key for me however is that rigour is applied to the design process. Its about testing sites and briefs and concepts repeatedly as they develop. Its about analysing the context and the environmental issues and then ensuring that the design responds in some way to each. All of this may seem obvious, but too often i see things getting placed on sites which respond to only one preoccupation and simply havent been thought through.

What this process then needs to be focussed on is clarity. Clarity of diagram, clarity of conceptual approach. The diagram is the key and every design move should reinforce that. The diagram should be rigorous and clear in terms of the articulation of entrance, circulation and space making.

Beyond that for me the process becomes about progressive simplification, about taking away all that is uncessary and which weakens the concept or muddies the clarity of the diagram.

I think i have been working far too long and been too battered by the vested interests and adversarial attitudes that one must overcome to get anything built to nail my flag to the mast of any one particular ism.

[solidred]

For a while, my idea of Morality, at a personal level, was a refelction of my enthusiasm for the paintings of Francis Bacon's work. Perhaps it's fortunate, for the rest of you, that I never actually designed or built anything in this 'style' which was to be boldly, visciously, harrowingly, menacingly ugly. Think deconstruction meets bad mood meets bull in a china shop. Where it was Moral, it was in honesty towards my inner, psychological clockwork; a sort of perverse beauty of twisted perception.

Realistically, though, I am currently thinking along similar lines to Am-I-Wry's proposal of the rigorous diagram. Something I was thinking moments before I read it. There's alot to be said for the sheer effort that goes into successfully realising a concept in any given specific circumstances and architectural projects fail far more often when they lack sustained adherence to a considered response than they do when not founded in an articulated theoretical position. The latter only comes into its own at the level of cultural debate. I find cultural debate an essential aspect of my own participation in the world but I recognize it as a somewhat specialized concern. Within the context of cultural debate, this 'optional extra' attitude might come across as heretical but my own philosophy still meanders along a 'both / and / (n)either' path...
Which is a smart-alec way of saying I haven't a clue.

[csintexas]

So what is ideal architecture?

I think we could all agree that we need to live within the limits of what our world provides us. We could also agree that we need to keep from polluting or damaging our environment to the point that we hurt ourselves. Most people would say that we need to live in a way that is sustainable. Meaning we could continue to live that way for thousands of years and more. We would also like as much comfort as the earth naturally provides.

Obviously our built environment is not sustainable in its present form. What we have today is the result of oil and that resource is quickly being exhausted. Depending on which expert you listen to, we will have used up ½ the worlds oil supply between now and 25 years from now. Currently no technology exists which can fully replace that resource. This means buildings which we design today will eventually be in a world without a cheap and fairly clean burning oil.

According to one expert it would take 25,000 wind generators to power Paris. Converting solar energy into electricity is even more costly. Coal is very dirty fuel which causes global warming and nuclear energy produces extremely toxic waste and also requires high technology.

While there is no clear definition as to what exactly is sustainable I think we can see that consuming less resources is crucial. When we do use resources we need to also make sure they last a long time. Labor on the other hand is abundant. We have lots of people in the world to get things done.

Our Homes
Since my area of interest is in residential architecture. I will describe some ideal characteristics of a house (meaning a residential building either single or multi family). It would be small on a per person basis, very energy efficient, finely crafted by artisans (which includes architects), built to last a long time, be inexpensive to maintain, be close to work, schools, stores, etc., be fairly high density land use, be made of locally produced and environmentally friendly materials as much as practical, it should also promote a healthy lifestyle -physically, socially and mentally. We need to finance our homes in a way which promotes these ideals.

Our Cities
For our cities these homes are built in. -We need to reduce our dependence on personal automobiles and reduce the cost of infrastructure our houses use. In my area, city population of two hundred thousand, I often observe a difference in temperature between in town and my house which is 5 miles outside of town of between two and four degrees. We use too much paving and too much water. We often have multiple sources of energy available and multiple communications utilities.. We need to fully develop the internet as soon as possible. It is much cheaper to push electrons around than it is to transport people to and from and also to build and power an office.

Our Communities
We need to make architecture about community. Our built environment needs to promote healthy, happy and safe living. We need to make frugality an honor. I watched a show yesterday about luxury yachts. They cost $70,000 a week to operate. Should we be wasting money like this? Think what might have been accomplished if that money had been used towards our ideals. We also need to end economic segregation. There should be no limit as to how small a house can be. The only limits should be the quality and method of construction. We need to make our places community friendly.

[am_i_wry]

Interesting thoughts Chris. There is a basic flaw in your premise though. 'Houses' almost by definition tend to imply a lower density and this greater distance to shops and workplaces. Its no coincidence that car ownership is lower in cities than in suburbs. City living is potentially much more sustainable than suburban.

[csintexas]

Ok thanks,

I see what you mean and I edited the last paragraph to clarify that point. Multi family housing is critical with todays population densities. My style is to post an essay and then go back and refine it. So I will probably add to it before it is finished.

[mx2]

[am_i_wry]

[csintexas]

yes, FLW was eventually in a position to be able to do that. If he had done that at the start of his carrer his career would not have started.

[mx2]