I have a problem with the terms ‘top-down’ design and ‘bottom-up’ design despite us all knowing what they mean and accepting the hierarchy they imply but, as long as design remains something that happens in stages in some kind of sequence, there’s nothing wrong with thinking of it as a process. However, top, bottom, left […]
The Dynamics of Delight: Architecture and AestheticsPeter F. Smith, Routeledge, London 2003 Last week I was looking for an article on that 1990s phenomenon, design coding in order to add something to a post with the working title of Pattern. I didn’t find it but, in folders within folders I did discover a stash of […]
Less Is More This is the one that started it all. Less Is More is taught and widely believed – whichever came first – to be what mid-20th century architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe claimed of his architecture. I learned just then that the phrase was first used by poet Robert Browning in his […]
Historically, defining beauty as singular, mysterious or beyond explanation must have served some function such as helping perpetrate some system of aesthetic elitism or stylistic churn. I only say that because it still does. Claiming, as I am, that architectural, visual Beauty is not the mystery it’s made out to be isn’t a popular stance. […]
If we just look at the left half of the image above, you’ll see the six categories that I call fundamental building attributes across the top, and below each of them are sixteen possible values – states they can take, effects they can produce. The state of any one attribute is independent of those of the […]
The previous post in this series described how this framework interpreted some words like Change, Transience, Uncertainty and Disquiet as far as architectural aesthetics is concerned. The aesthetic heyday of any building designed in the fashion of the moment will be fleeting but no building is aesthetically timeless. At the outset, I made it clear […]
We’re almost done. Over the past twenty months, at the rate of one post per month, I’ve explained how this thing called The Architecture of Architectures came about and what it claims to do, and I’ve described how the sixteen aesthetic effects are derived from a simple structure that shows both how they are different […]
F:ASSOCIATE is the sixteenth and final aesthetic effect. There are no more. F:ASSOCIATE is like E:DESIGNATE in encapsulating all three types of aesthetic idea, but differs by evoking them by a tangible similarity instead of a tangible difference. At its core is UNITE instead of SEPARATE. With ASSOCIATE, the framework is complete. Both DESIGNATE and […]
There are only two effects left to introduce: E: DESIGNATE in this post and F: ASSSOCIATE in four weeks’ time. These two effects are the only two having all three types of aesthetic ideas working together, along with a physical difference in the case of DESIGNATE and a physical similarity in the case of ASSOCIATE. […]
CONFLATE is the architectural effect generated when an Idea of Unite and an Idea of Separate are evoked by a characteristic that has a similarity with its surroundings. It is paired with JUXTAPOSE, and fits into the framework like this. As was the case with JUXTAPOSE, CONFLATE evokes no Idea of Negate and so is […]
These posts are becoming shorter and the text almost mechanical as it becomes more apparent that the core realities and types of idea are equivalent parts of the one single structure. The next pair of characteristics C: JUXTAPOSE and D: CONFLATE are the thirteenth and fourteenth effects and the third and final pair containing two […]
B: INTEGRATE is the other half of this second of three pairs of characteristics comprising two types of idea. As with A: DIFFERENTIATE, one type is an Idea of Unite and the other is an Idea of Negate – a sense that the characteristic (or attribute) observed isn’t that of a building or the building it […]
With the next pair of characteristics A: DIFFERENTIATE and B: INTEGRATE we run out of digits and so switch to hexadecimal naming, convenient because there are sixteen aesthetic effects. These two are the eleventh and twelfth. If every building, that has ever been built or will be, has the six attributes of Colour, Pattern, Shape, […]
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 […]
