We know enough now to be able to predict what an effect will do by just looking at its components. 9: ASSIMILATE Colour to 9: ASSIMILATE Here we have a building purporting to be the colour of a cloud and not only that but the substance and shape of one as well. It is a […]
Any model that attempts to classify and describe the real world has to deal with the problem of grain because anything can be classified if the classifications are large enough or numerous enough. The alchemists first divided the world into the four basic elements of air, earth, fire and water, later adding the three essential […]
The aesthetic effect MERGE is not as audacious as DISGUISE but it is easier to understand. It’s one thing to contrive the Surface characteristics of a building to make it look like a mountain, but something else to place that building amongst other mountains. With MERGE, a building characteristic merges with that of its surroundings […]
So far I’ve mentioned aesthetic ideas that Separate and aesthetic ideas that Unite. Because they’re ideas, they’re totally subjective – all in our minds – and dependent on what we know, feel or are told. They’re also liable to change or to becoming dated and, perhaps because of this, they’re both important types of idea in architectural aesthetics. […]
I wrote about COMBINE in June 2013 when I was first toying with this project. I chose two start with it because it’s the architectural aesthetic effect we’re most familiar with. COMBINE is when what we see is reinforced by what we know, and what we know includes all those subjectivities arising from culture and […]
EXTRACT introduces the second grouping of architectural ideas – notions of Unite. In the world of architecture, and especially the world of architectural presentation and media, ideas of Unite are extremely important. Much talk about architecture is couched in the language of ideas that suggest a unity between a building and a landscape or cityscape. […]
Here’s Farnsworth House again but this time the surroundings aren’t green but white. What’s going on? Snow fell, obviously, but the building is no longer some white thing in contrast with its surroundings. It’s still white but it’s a very distinct and different aesthetic effect. Colour to 2: ATTACH It’s still an example of Colour […]
The two fundamental tangible attribute behaviours of SEPARATE and UNITE can’t explain everything. It’s true they’re what all people see but, precisely because of that, they’re also the basis for other, more complex types of aesthetic judgments. Conventionally, discussions of architectural aesthetics have obsessed about qualities such as ‘harmony’, ‘proportion’, ‘rhythm’, and ‘scale’ and these […]
In the previous post of this series, 0: SEPARATE, it was necessary to talk about an attribute of a building (i.e. Colour, Pattern, Shape, Position, Alignment or Size) as being either different from its surroundings, or not being different. Things will be easier now there will be 1: UNITE to contrast it with. UNITE is […]
SEPARATE is one of the two fundamental architectural effects that form the core of the other fourteen. From a very early age we are taught to judge whether two things are the same or different. SEPARATE is when an attribute of a building is different from that of its surroundings. In this next image, the […]
There were many iterations of The Architecture of Architectures between the 2007 draft and the current form it essentially assumed in 2014. The problem was always how to communicate a non-linear framework that organises and at the same time describes aesthetic phenomena. Non-linear information has to be comprehended first as a structure and only later […]
The Attributes What is the stuff of architecture? What is it made of? If architects are capable of producing it and others are capable of recognising it, we must all be able to access certain basic quantities in order to do so but what are they? To say “mass, space and light”, as many do, […]
The reality shown in the photograph above must have looked beautiful to photographer Virgile Lafreniere and, thanks to him, the ideas evoked by that reality are beautiful for us to contemplate. The igloo isolated in its inhospitable landscape says something of man’s tenacious existence on the planet. The entrance and the aurora borealis mirrored about […]
The introduction to the 2007 draft included a philosophical exposition that wasn’t intended so much as a justification but more to illustrate how it fitted into the landscape of philosophical aesthetics in general. As it turned out, my area of concern was the same as that of Hume and Kant and my conclusions broadly in […]
