Tag Archives: what if architectural aesthetics in general and beauty in particular were knowable after all and not the mysteries they’re made out to be?

The Middle Ground

Architects used to have us believe that better architecture made for better lives. They were rightly ignored as it would make more sense for us all first to agree on what a better life is before thinking about the means to achieve it. Of course some degree of spatial and physiological requirements need to be met as a precondition for not-so-miserable life but architecture hasn’t been about that for some time now. What has endured is the idea that Architecture provides nourishment beyond the spatial and physiological and that this is some kind of aesthetic experience peculiar to architecture and, worse, accessible only to those who can appreciate it and, worse still, afford it.

I’ve always believed this in one form or another albeit with varying emphases and my own notions of what counts as architectural nourishment. Over the past decade or so, I’ve leaned towards spatial geometries that satisfy spatial and social needs and that, for me at least, are aesthetically satisfying because of that. If they’re more achievable for more people then so much the better. I’ve never questioned or been asked to question if architecture and its embedded belief system was the only way of achieving the good life. Until last week.

I’ve just finished reading this. The test of any hypothesis is the amount of information it organizes. This book organizes a few thousand years of Chinese history around the simple hypothesis that the Chinese primarily saw the courtyard as a vertical link between the land and the sky or, if you like, Heaven and Earth. Although courtyards provided ventilation, illumination and internal views, their main purpose was to link Heaven and Earth. The Chinese notion of heaven is synonymous with sky, and the two are also written with the same character (tian, 天). The Chinese had no need for a heaven populated with deities. The sky provides sunlight, darkness, warmth, rain and snow and, together with the ground, is all one needs to grow rice and structure one’s existence.

This strive for a balance between earthly phenomena (over which one had influence) and heavenly ones (over which one did not) was in line with the teachings of Confucius (551–479 BCE) who advocated a “middle way” for people to make sense of their place in the world and live the good life. In summertime, a courtyard might be full of people conversing, singing, eating and drinking but in winter the sky would be the dominant presence. This middle way was about balance, not moderation. The most difficult thing to accept is that the courtyard wasn’t a representation of the good life but all that was needed to make it happen. And it did for 2,500 years or so. The Chinese didn’t see any reason to improve upon or change the courtyard as it was already sufficient. It was possible to live a good life with only a courtyard and an awareness of what it meant.

Last week I taught a history class on Romanesque and Gothic architecture. There’s a lot to be said for a personal, unmediated (and unspoken) relationship with both Earth and Heaven even if it doesn’t produce an architecture of flying buttresses, rose windows and gargoyles. The cloister in a monastery is close to the Chinese notion of a courtyard even if the open space is only circumnavigated by monks looking inward and not up.

Artist James Turrell’s 2001 Live Oak Friends [Quaker] Meeting House is closer with its emphasis on the vertical relationship between Heaven and Earth and also, let’s not forget, with its economy of means. However, there are three important differences.

  1. Live Oak Friends Meeting House is a place of worship. It is a specific place people go to at specific times for the specific act of worship. In some sort of abstract way, it might (or should) structure the lives people lead during the rest of the day.
  2. The roof (or, rather, the soffit) is still very much a barrier between Heaven and Earth. People can see heaven but are still as physically far away from it as ever.
  3. Pretty as they are, Turrell’s skyscapes are also strange in that they make us see the sky with new eyes, as all good art should. Although the sky is real, we appreciate it as a two-dimensional trompe l’oeil representation of the heavens above. [Next week’s history class is about Renaissance Architecture and, the week after, Baroque.]
Live Oak Friends Meeting House, Houston, Texas, 2000. Production still from the Art in the Twenty-First Century Season 1 episode, Spirituality, 2001. © Art21, Inc. 2001.

Judging by the length of time the Chinese courtyard survived, it’s reasonable to say it was fit for purpose as a way of structuring life as well as the physical environment. The Chinese courtyard would be a perfect example of architectural determinism if only it were more about buildings and less about the spaces surrounded by them. Anyway, all this was news to me. Possibly a revelation. Gothic cathedrals and Chinese courtyards are both associated with particular views of the world but, while Gothic cathedrals might advertise a blueprint for living, the Chinese courtyard encapsulates one and gives everyone a good chance at the good life in the here and now.

It’s not everyday I’m asked to disregard the basis for everything I thought I knew about architecture.

I had another look at some courtyards I’ve admired in the past, limiting my search to ones along an axis. My first was Philip Johnson’s Rockefeller Guest House even though the axial procession to the courtyard stops at the front door. It’s actually very Chinese in having a change of direction to compose oneself before entering the main room proper but this courtyard is a disappointment. It’s a light well and a horizontal view opportunity. Apart from the three stepping stones, there’s no place a person can be on the ground with open sky above. The small terrace outside the living room is covered by a canopy more to prevent overlooking by neighbors than protect from rain or shine. Still, it’s pleasant enough to Western eyes and, until now, I never found it lacking. This house is all about the entertaining space.

My next axial courtyard house was Craig Ellwood’s 1955 Hunt House in Malibu, CA. It’s symmetrical and processional. It’s a beautiful plan. The left and right courtyards are functional but the horizontal view of the ocean from the roofless terrace is the main event. I’d always thought the skylight around the chimney was a curious and unnecessary feature but it doesn’t seem so strange to me now.

Real estate pressure in China means the good life isn’t so available now. More and more people can only aspire to a horizontal views from (and of) towers. It would be nice [and a hugely profitable architectural product for someone] if the courtyard as a vertical space to be traversed, used and appreciated could be combined with voids and stacked housing. Below is my first attempt at designing a symmetrical courtyard house. I was already thinking of stacking them but it was still to early to think about how this could be done or even if it were possible.

As soon as I finished, I realized I’d just designed Kazuo Shinohara’s 1967 Yamashiro House. All that was missing was the change of level.

The section appears to be taken downwards from the post in the middle of the living room yet upwards from the stairs in the car parking space. This space has a portion with a lowered soffit and probably creates a pleasing effect when moving from the lower courtyard into the upper one.

Shinohara bathrooms and kitchens are always utilitarian but I prefer my windows opening onto the courtyard rather than a front door off axis to the right and kitchen door off axis to the left in otherwise blank walls. In the plan above, the peripheral area with the dark shading is the full extent of the site. The living room has two tall windows in the corners where the desks are. I’m amazed how much light appears to be coming in through the one in this photo. Giving each of the bedrooms their own light well is probably a good idea. I’ve never seen an image of the courtyard as seen from the living room. It doesn’t seem like a place to be enjoyed. It’s all about the living room.

There’s a lot of traversing implied voids in Shinohara’s built work. There’s Uncompleted House [1970], Shino House [1970], Cubic Forest [1971], Repeating Crevice [1971] and House in Higashi-Tamagawa [1973] but traversing actual voids occurs not only in Yamashiro House but also in Sky Rectangle [1971], House in Karuizawa [1975] and House in Itoshima [1976]. Yamashiro House (above) and House in Itoshima (below) are the only two with axial movement through courtyard-like voids to the innermost and most important space and even then, the actual route in House in Itoshima is somewhat circuitous.

Shinohara’s House in Itoshima is like Craig Ellwood’s 1955 Hunt House in having the ocean as the void beyond. The axial space at the end of the procession is largely and strongly symbolic even if were don’t know of what. It’s not a space traversed in the course of a day.

If an infinite and horizontal view isn’t available, then having a courtyard on the other side of the innermost room is a good idea, but now my symmetrical courtyard house starts to be Geoffrey Bawa’s Alfred House Office which is entered on axis through a gate between the garage and rooms for the servants (who have a concealed corridor running the length of the house). The first courtyard is an entrance courtyard onto which the servants’ rooms look. The middle courtyard is the most photographed as it has a pool occupying the middle and which has to be walked around. I’m sure the last courtyard the other side of the living room is lovely but it’s more garden than courtyard.

Plan for the Alfred House Office (courtesy of the Geoffrey Bawa Trust)

The pool courtyard too is lovely but the parts open to the sky seem incidental to the pool in the same way that the side courtyards of Elwood’s Hunt House are secondary to the ocean view. In the image below, a bed of pebbles separates the part of the courtyard open to the sky from the route used by people going to the living room.

My last example of an on-axis courtyard is Tadao Ando’s 1976 Sumiyoshi House. It comes closest to the principle of the Chinese courtyard. The entrance door opening off the right side of the porch has, as I mentioned, its Chinese precedents but, once inside, the procession is axial. That’s all by the bye. One person’s photogenic courtyard is another person’s miserable light well but I’ll leave the implications and contradictions of stacked courtyards for another post.

• • • 

Simple Construction

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 1856 poem Andrea del Sarto. The poem seems longer than it is. Mies van Der Rohe must’ve thought so too.


The idea was that a building didn’t need to consist of very much as long as its elements were few and perfect. This was not the beauty of the found object or the ad-hoc. Miesian beauty had a habit of requiring classy materials like onyx or Carrara marble that weren’t cheap and, God forbid, would never be mistaken for cheap.

Even inexpensive materials such as steel could be converted into value-added ones by adding chromium or bronze, or by processes such as grinding welds smooth or by laying slabs of (Carrara) marble perfectly level in specially-designed trays to collect and drain away whatever rainwater spilt over the edges. I never did understand why the water couldn’t just fall directly onto the floodplain where the grass don’t grow.

Farnsworth House, Plano, Illinois-11 (Photo credit: 24gotham)

This dictum of Less Is More extended to the details where, LMvdR claimed, God resided. He (Mies) wasn’t one to say “the Devil is in the detail”. Next up is a window frame detail that has a single pane of glass sandwiched between two steel angles welded to a structural I-beam with a shadow gap of all things. Back in 1945-1951, there was no thermal transfer problem that couldn’t be solved by a shadow gap and oil-fired underfloor heating. Granted, it’s for a summer weekend house, but this window detail is a coolth radiator.

This Swedish window unit has many more parts, materials that are sophisticated in their own way, and also an inert gas. I’m fairly certain it has no more parts than it needs to have in order to take on the additional problem of keeping the building interior warm and free from condensation.

There’s much science to not be seen in the profile design of the spacer bars, thermal inserts, thermal reinforcing, not to mention the argon gas replacing thermally conductive air.


It was Paul Rudolph who said of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (‘though he probably called him by the familiar “Mies”) that his buildings were beautiful only because he chose to solve so few problems. This would all be history now if it weren’t for two important legacies, of which Less is More is one. The other and lesser one was that late 20th century style known as Minimalism, for which much has been claimed for much the same reasons.

Yes Is More

This slogan is from the early 21st century and thus more recent history. I’m not going to spend too much time on it. An architectural practice saying “We don’t say no to anything!” is nothing new and in 2008, BIG was probably the world’s most zeitgeisty practice, mopping up everything ZHA and OMA said either no to or would have had they been asked. They still are.

Feelings Are Facts

This is a new one. On the surface, and probably below as well, it means that subjectivity is objectivity. Curiously, and without getting all philosophical about it, it accords feelings the authority of facts while simultaneously diluting the basis for that authority. It’s as nonsensical as Less is More must once have seemed, and so’s obviously a winner that will run and run. But if feelings are facts, what becomes of facts then, I wonder? Do they get pushed off centre-stage, or offstage completely? I want to be on-record as saying this is one particularly dangerous idea to lob into the English-speaking world at this particular stage in history where, as we see, feelings trump facts. But rather than telling us something new, perhaps this is really just our times being re-stated back at us, telling us something already in the back of our minds. (Zeitgeists being zeitgeists, the big ideas usually do nothing more than hold up a mirror.) But whether it’s prescient or merely perceptive, it’s already the one statement that sums up our times. Worryingly, when this particular idea has overstayed its welcome, signaling its end isn’t going to be as simple as putting “Post-“ in front of it.

You can read a bit more about Feelings are Facts in this 2016 book with a foreword by Peter Cook.

MAD Works: MAD Architects

by Ma Yansong (Author)

Phaidon Press

The first complete overview of the most important contemporary architecture practice ever to have emerged from China

I’m not ignoring the political implications of Feelings are Facts but to react to it emotionally is to admit its truth. And maybe there is some. Architects do, after all, want people to like their buildings on some level even if it’s only a superficial one. And even if the general public are never the ones that commission buildings, their opinion still needs to be courted and media profiles still need to be worked on or else the rich and famous will never know who to commission. All considered, it seems like the right time for a revival of buildings people feel they relate to, even if architects like to overstate the importance their buildings have for society.

After alll, it’s only a hundred years since we had architects telling us how we should live. Buildings catering to low-level Maslovian needs might have housed people but they didn’t feed their souls we were told. Post-modern architects architectplained to us that this was because of a lack of historical reference in our public architecture – any public architecture other than public housing, that is – and duly stepped up to the plate. But even this proved too intellectual, paving the way for ruthless populist practices such as Bjarke Ingels’ BIG and superficially down-to-earth (“I like curves”) Zaha Hadid. Neoliberal expressionist architecture and its architecture of affect was beyond criticism because it was meant to be. All its clients wanted of it was for people to cower before it.

As the temples to our tech giants show, people like being shown who their oppressors are.

But if it’s now okay to have feelings again, Neoliberal Expressionism must’ve been overconfident ahead of its time. In this past fifty years we’ve come a long way from architects telling us what buildings should mean to us, to architects telling us what they should make us feel.


It’s sometimes the case that a blog post only happens when two or more events or thoughts are close enough to force a connection and that’s what happened here. The first was me encountering that statement “Feelings are Facts” at a time when, in a Theory class, I was trying to explain to students how (all?) architectural aesthetic ideas can be divided into one of three categories. In the past I’ve called these categories Ideas of Separate, Ideas of Unite and Ideas of Negate and between March 2019 and January 2021 there was a series of posts as my first public attempt to describe this way of looking at buildings and understanding them. The names of these three categories of architectural idea translated cleanly into Chinese but, with the more complex effects, things began to unravel. I shouldn’t have been surprised those names had no direct equivalents in Chinese as they were only ever approximations in English to start with.

But if something is identifiable as I was claiming, then it is distinct and has to be called something and so I devised a system of notation using letters and superscripts to indicate how, using these three types of idea, the brain modifies what the eye sees. The two systems were interchangeable and, although their identifiers weren’t words, they were unique and described what was going on. In retrospect, this new notation did nothing more than what Chinese characters do all the time.

Those three types of idea include all the big ones or rather, all the big visual aesthetic ones. Ideas of Separate include novelty, innovation, natural and artificial. That’s a lot already. Ideas of Unite include knowledge of function, type and culture as well as concepts such as ecological.

I provisionally include “History” here, thereby indicating my interpretation of it a set of ideas forming some kind of conceptual temporal unity with some present-day real-life context. I suspect however, that grouping and locating these ideas merely marks a wormhole to some separate framework that maps architectural aesthetic concepts in the dimension of Time. (I’m curious, but there’s still much to know about the here and now.)

Ideas of Negate are when the design of a building is contrived to make us think a building is either not a building, or not the building it is. This accounts for buildings shaped like ducks and such, but, in very rare cases, a thought of “that is not a building!” accounts for those rare buildings that have the power to change our perception of what it is a building can be. My thesis is that these are the only words and concepts one needs to explain and understand what any building is doing aesthetically. For visual aesthetics, that is.

But instead of these three categories of facts, suppose we substitute feelings and see what we get? What is the emotional effect of these Ideas of Separate, for example? What do we want to feel from “newness” for example? There must be something because so much architectural endeavour is spent trying to produce it. To get the ball rolling, I’m going to say “EXCITING”, but only because we think buildings that don’t have an idea that produces this feeling are “DULL” or “LAME”. Variety is the spice of life, they say, even if some people might find an excess of excitement “THREATENING”. On the other hand, Ideas of Unite are safe and satisfying. “Harmonious” is the traditional synonym but already embedded is the notion that Harmony is A Good Thing. I’m going to go with “SATISFYING”, but only because too much harmony can be “BORING”. So far so neat. For Ideas of Negate, I’m going to go with “SURPRISING” for now, but only because I see the opposite as “PREDICTABLE” because I know I will have to account for the “I never thought a building could be (as amazing as) this!” factor. In passing, the much spoken-of “DELIGHT” would be a combination of “EXCITING” and “SURPRISING,” and possibly with a touch of “SATISFYING”. And who’s to say it’s not?

  • If there was no exciting Idea of Separate (such as “newness”), we’d still be left with something satisfying and surprising. It just wouldn’t be exciting.
  • If there was no satisfying Idea of Unite (such as “proportional” or “in scale”), we’d still be left with something exciting and surprising. It might be strange, but it wouldn’t be satisfying or comforting.
  • If there was no surprising Idea of Negate (such as “is it really a building?” or “incredible!”) then we’d still be left with something exciting and satisfying, but not challenging.

I feel there’s more to reveal in the intersections of these three emotions and, hopefully, there’ll be relatable words to pin down those feelings. If those words translate cleanly into other languages, it‘d be a sign of shared, if not necessarily universal, concerns and would indicate the degree that architectural beauty is a socio-economic construct.

Rather than identifying qualities that architects strive to produce and which are supposedly the product of their various design choices (appropriately modified by some design theory or manifesto), I don’t see anything wrong with introducing into the design process the names for the emotions by which a building will be evaluated, provided we can agree what they should be. I still believe in facts, but it might be time to admit that there are no facts in architectural aesthetics, and that what we thought were facts were, at their heart, really emotions after all. That’s not hard to understand. The hard part will be not getting all emotional about it.

I began by distrusting this idea that Feelings are Facts but instead concluded that, as far as architectural aesthetics is concerned, certain things we thought were facts – the notion of “harmony” for example – might have only ever been the articulation of feelings, So I’m not as opposed to this construction Feelings are Facts as I thought I’d be. Just because something is subjective doesn’t mean it can’t be mapped or analyzed. But that’s not about to happen and is why I’m sharing. Where all this feeling–fact stuff will lead architecturally is another matter. I understand its appealbut, by not reacting to it emotionally, I can’t be feeling it. I won’t be surprised if Feelings are Facts is interpreted as license to do anything and without justification, and for those who have to live with the consequences, the only difference will be being expected to emote on sight of a building instead of cowering before it.

Feeling are Facts might be taking our relationship to buildings to another level but whether up or down I can’t say. Without getting all Foucault about it, there’s also the very real possibility it’s just a new way of making things stay the same.

[Cite]

16 Types of Beauty

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. It’s far more common to claim that Beauty is simply something that must be believed if the aesthetic system is to function. For one, Patrik Schumacher says so on p306, The Autopoiesis of Architecture, Vol. I.


It wouldn’t be the first time something has been defined as unknowable but I don’t know how it’s possible to claim that Beauty is unknowable and then in the same sentence claim to have knowledge of one of its properties – i.e. what its function is. Perhaps Schumacher meant to say that having people believe in something unknowable has its uses. You could interpret “Beauty must be shrouded in mystery in order to fulfill its function in the design process” as saying just that, but this is a design process we need to escape, not perpetrate. Only a sham design process would revert to hocus focus to sustain some illusion of utility.

Wouldn’t it be far simpler and more intellectually honest to have a knowable Beauty whose mechanisms are understood and explicit? That way, those who choose to tailor their design decisions to contrive a certain outcome would be free to do so. However, if they do, they can expect more structured scrutiny and precise criticism of the aesthetic choices they made as well as critical judgments on whether the required result was achieved and, if so, if it was worth it. We’d have a more intelligent design process, we would have less magical but more coherent design and, crucially, we would have more intelligent evaluation of it.

The biggest benefit we can expect Beauty being knowable is that our preoccupation with it will lessen, freeing us to get on with other things such as incremental improvements to other, non-visual, forms of architectural beauty.

In the previous post in this series, I suggested we think of architectural aesthetics as a slot machine with six wheels, each of which can stop in one of sixteen different positions, giving a total of 166 different outcomes.

= 16,777,216 is the number of possible and unique combinations of aesthetic effects that six mutually independent building attributes can together produce. This is the number of unique architectures in the world. This number is finite but imposes no limits on creativity because any one architecture can have any number of manifestations of it.


= 16 x 164 = 1,048,576 is the number of architectures that have the same effect for any two attributes. This alone has no meaning, but 8 x 164 = 524,288 is the number of architectures that have the same unifying effect for the two Placement Attributes. I call this Importance, but it could also be called “Formality” and shares aspects of “Classicism” and “Neo-classicism”. An almost-consistency might exist when two out of three Surface attributes have the same effect but I don’t know yet.


= 16 x 163 = 65,536 is the number of architectures that have the same effect for three attributes. This also has little meaning except for when those three attributes are the Surface Attributes and we get what I call Consistency.


= 16 x 16 x 16 = 4,096 is the number of architectures that have the three Surface Attributes forming a group with the same effect (such as for Consistency), the two Placement Attributes forming a group with the same effect (such as Importance) and the Size Attribute (that always is a group of one). I called this Strength, although some other name may be just as good. This means that Consistency + Importance = Strength. I’m fine with that.


= 16 x 16 = 256 was the number of architectures for which all but one attribute have the same effect. I called this Emphasis as the differing attribute is always the one highlighted.


= 16 is the number of architectures that have the same effect for all six attributes. I call this uber-consistency Beauty. There are sixteen types of it. Beauty is as good a name as any for these 16 improbable architectures. That there are more than one type of Beauty one goes some way towards explaining why we may think one building beautiful and at the same time think another completely different building also beautiful.

With only sixteen combinations out of a possible 16,777,216, it seems as if Beauty really is a one in a million occurence but this is not the case. This “one in a million” is the number of routes that lead to (a) Beauty. It is no guarantee that one in a million journeys will end there.

It would be if Beauty were a random occurrence but, while it is possible to say that Beauty is the result of certain criteria being followed intuitively even if those criteria aren’t explicit, it’s more likely the case that a consistency of thought is lavished on only two or three of the six attributes, and the others are left to be determined for better or worse by some combination of circumstance, intuition and chance.

What this framework does is propose workable criteria that collate and link visual and aesthetic (i.e. subjective) information for every building that has ever been built or will be. It explains known phenomena as well as provides insights into aesthetic phenomena less acknowledged. It is not enough for it to just explain the beautiful. It must explain everything else as well. The previous 22 posts in this series explained everything else. This post is about the sixteen types of Beauty.

The Sixteen Types of Beauty

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The Beauty of SEPARATE

The Beauty of SEPARATE involves no subjectivities and is one of the easiest types of beauty to appreciate and achieve. All attributes are visually distinct from their surroundings. It’s not that we’re unreceptive to it for we recognize it in certain industrial and engineering structures. People once, quite rightly, saw it in aeroplanes, automobiles and ocean liners. The Beauty of Separate is refreshing for its absence of whimsy, nostalgia, reference and other forms of aesthetic grandstanding.

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The Beauty of UNITE

The Beauty of Unite is also free of whimsy, nostalgia, reference and other forms of aesthetic grandstanding even though all building attributes share something tangible with their surroundings. Vernacular architectures such as the Masai village are the best example of this. All houses are the same and all relate to each other in the same ways. These traditions are of course culturally handed down. It is not that nobody thinks to make all their houses the same and in the same way. It is just that nobody thinks they need to be any different.

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The Beauty of DETACH

When all six attributes look different and all are reinforced by a sense of difference (whether that be “modern” or “artificial” or some other), we have The Beauty of DETACH. This framework wouldn’t be fit for purpose if it didn’t explain why we think about certain buildings the way we do. Any aesthetic framework must explain the beautiful but The Beauty of DETACH is only one of the sixteen types of Beauty.

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The Beauty of ATTACH

A building doesn’t have to be white and made of metal and glass to be different from its surroundings. Here, all attributes have a visual unity with their surroundings but they can also be thought of as as artificial as the building above.

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The Beauty of EXTRACT

This is a tricky one. Everything certainly looks different from everything else but there’s also an uncanny sameness about everything, as if some unspoken rules are being followed such as, “don’t make two adjacent buildings the same”, “don’t have more than one domed building or more than one tower” or “don’t paint adjacent buildings the same colour”. In short, the Beauty of EXTRACT is that of contrived difference, and most likely results when the work of one designer attempts to look like the work of many over time. With this example, the idea of “the single hand at work” is the idea that unifies these otherwise different buildings.

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The Beauty of COMBINE

The Beauty of COMBINE is the opposite of The Beauty of EXTRACT. No building is contrivedly different yet there is a unifying sameness about which we don’t feel uneasy. What we are seeing is the coherency of vernacular architecture overlaid with motifs that, though individually different are all products of the same culture. The Beauty of COMBINE can also be thought of as the opposite of The Beauty of Detach. Whereas Farnsworth House had a visual difference reinforced by a notional difference, The Beauty of COMBINE has a visual unity reinforced by a notional unity. Both are very strong effects.

sanaa yemen
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The Beauty of DISGUISE

This next building does what it does successfully and across all attributes – unlike The Duck, the size of which readily gives it away as not being what it appears to be. True, dinosaurs are equally improbable but mapping aesthetics to simultaneously account for the dimension of Time (in which all buildings exist) is something that will have to wait. For now, this building is a good example of The Beauty of DISGUISE – when buildings stand out from their surroundings yet appear to not be buildings. Hiding in plain sight.

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The Beauty of MERGE

Having a building not look like a building has its advantages, most of which serve some military purpose. The idea is to make a building – usually some bunker or fortification – not look like what it is to an observer who, in all likelihood, is looking for it. While such buildings may not stand close scrutiny, the idea is to make a building merge with its surroundings so successfully that it has no (visual) existence as a building to distant observers.

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The Beauty of ALIENATE

Buildings that look like spaceships are the clearest examples of The Beauty of ALIENATE because the notion of “coming from outer space” encapsulates the two notions of difference and of a building not being a building. As an aesthetic effect, it’s fairly easy to identify. It too, has its place and is just another option in the architect’s bag of tricks.

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The Beauty of ASSIMILATE

The Beauty of ASSIMILATE is that of merging with the surroundings, but not in a weird way even though it is as wonderfully unreal as The Beauty of ALIENATE. This example isn’t a real castle but from this distance everything about it including that growing up out of the very ground thing tells you it is and has always been. Overlaid with those visual cues is the notion of picturesque composition although, to be fair, castles have historically tended to occur in craggy coastal landforms with good views over the surrounding landscape. It works both ways.

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The Beauty of DIFFERENTIATE

This is my poster building for The Beauty of DIFFERENTIATE although there are many other contenders we’re all familiar with. These are the buildings that look different and their notion encapsulates the idea of unity with the surroundings, and the idea of not being a building. Giving a building the qualities of some local flower usually works. If you’re in Singapore and it’s a lotus blossom floating on the water, job done. The Beauty of DIFFERENTIATE is just that – different. We’ve all seen flower buildings now. There’s not the notional difference of something innovative or original.

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The Beauty of INTEGRATE

We can think of The Beauty of INTEGRATE as the perfect reproduction – or as pastiche if you don’t approve of that sort of thing unless it’s restoration or recreation of something that existed once. This is a modern building, and an office building at that. Everything fits in and everything matches, including Size and scale. There is no separation or difference whether real or notional. This means there’s no surprise or originality either. This is not to denigrate this as a form of Beauty. It’s just one more out of sixteen and none is inherently better than any other – they are merely different.

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CCC CC C
The Beauty of JUXTAPOSE

Unsurprisingly, The Beauty of JUXTAPOSE depends upon all attributes being visibly different from the surroundings but overlaid with a notion that encapsulates an idea of separation and an idea of unity. This example was discussed in detail in the post on C:JUXTAPOSE but religious buildings in elevated places tend to do this.

CCC CC C

DDD DD D
The Beauty of CONFLATE

It’s no surprise that this building can be used to illustrate one of the sixteen types of beauty and it happens to be The Beauty of CONFLATE. Again, and given all that’s been said about this building, it can’t not be – at least from this particular viewpoint, and at this particular time of year. In wintertime when the building still has its warm browns and yellows, the trees are bare and the ground and waterfall white, it becomes an example of something else.

DDD DD D

EEE EE E
The Beauty of DESIGNATE

Beauty for effects involving three ideas is highly contentious as it is nearly impossible for people to hold the same three ideas for six characteristics for any length of time. Conceptualy, Sydney Opera House has aged well. It is no longer novel or new, but it is still remembered as a building that was new and novel once, and this can’t be said about that many buildings. It is one of the few buildings in the world that actually deserve to be called iconic according to the current use of the word.

EEE EE E

FFF FF F
The Beauty of ASSOCIATE

After the drama of The Beauty of DESIGNATE, The Beauty of ASSOCIATE seems almost an anticlimax but is just as difficult to achieve and to sustain even though its unity with its surroundings may seem effortless. All attributes of this building unite with the surroundings, the surface ones doing it via transparency. That transparency also hits all three notional buttons and is sustained by apparent lack of contents. It is barely a building.

FFF FF F

And that’s it. I never expected a unified framework for architectural aesthetics to be simple but nor is it that complicated. These next two pairs of illustrations show how the sixteen types are formed. The analogy with light and colour fits. The red green and blue ellipses represent the three types of idea that, in combination with either of the binary states of 0 and 1, produce the various primary effects 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7, secondary effects 8, 9, A, B, C and D, and tertiary effects E and F.

AFTERWORD

This framework comprising six building attributes and sixteen aesthetic effects can explain why we arrive at the aesthetic judgments we do when we look at a building. Any building. All buildings.

16,777,216 architectures are all there is. 15,059,072 (approx. 90%) of these are subjective in having one or more attributes of a building evoke one or more kinds of idea in a viewer. Nevertheless, how a building appears is no longer the mystery it was. Architectural aesthetics is no longer akin to counting the stars in the sky.

This knowledge has a price. Now that all built reality can be contained within a single unifying framework, the ugly need no longer shock or anger, the fashionable no longer thrill or entertain, and the beautiful no longer astound or mystify. The Periodic Table did the same for chemistry when it organised The Elements into a framework providing insights into their properties and behaviours. It liberated both chemistry and mankind from the false claims of alchemists. It did not diminish the wonder of the Universe.

Knowing the elements and chemistry of architectural aesthetics should not lessen our appreciation of architecture. It should instead enhance it as we learn to see architecture as more than the chronology of styles or the charting of individual career trajectories it is now. Even if for no other reason than this, it had to be done.

Graham McKay 24 Jan. 2021


[Cite]

[metaslider id=218926 cssclass=””]

The 2007 Draft: Introduction
The 2007 Draft: Derivation
The Architecture of Architectures (2007 ~ )
0: SEPARATE
1: UNITE
2: DETACH
3: ATTACH

4: EXTRACT
5: COMBINE
6: DISGUISE
7: MERGE
8: ALIENATE
9: ASSIMILATE
A: DIFFERENTIATE
B: INTEGRATE
C: JUXTAPOSE
D: CONFLATE
E: DESIGNATE
F: ASSOCIATE
Notes & Exceptions
Words & Buildings
More Words
The 16 Types of Beauty

More Words

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 others. Simply put, architectural aesthetics is a slot machine with six sixteen-sided wheels. 166 = 16,7778,216.

This number 16,7778,216 is the number of architectures in the world, the number of possible and unique combinations of aesthetic effects that six mutually independent building attributes can together produce. The number is large yet finite. Having a limit to the number of possible combinations of aesthetic effects in no way limits the number of manifestations of effects producing those combinations. That bit remains infinite. This is a framework, not a stylebook.

The only way there can be any more combinations is for there to be other fundamental building attributes in addition to the six of Colour, Pattern, Shape, Position, Alignment and Size. They must also be tangible, visual attributes. This framework is not about the aesthetics of building performance or economics, but then, architectural aesthetics never is. I might wish for the building performance to be recognized as a form of beauty but, when I say architectural aesthetics is visual aesthetics, this is just me stating the reality.

Six architectural characteristics and sixteen architectural aesthetic effects produce 166 unique combinations of effects that can be represented as names using hexadecimal digits, for example, as 229AA7 or 88743C. These names, or “signatures”, have meaning only as sequences of digits. (They are not numbers that can be added or subtracted, for example.)

You can think of this number 16,777,216 as the number of possible aesthetic signatures – each is unique. The majority of these signatures describe a series of disconnected effects that either contradict or cancel each other and produce no synergy. They’re like slot machine wheels that don’t align. However, and it’s usually the result of some person following some rules whether intentionally or by instinct, some of these 16,777,216 architectures will have effects that are identical and produce patterns of synergies that describe known aesthetic qualities.

This post is about the architectural phenomena of Consistency, Importance, Strength, and Emphasis which are easily identified and explained in terms of this framework. There are probably more. Beauty is one of the most prized and the most elusive and will have a post of its own.

Consistency

The word consistency is used a lot in architecture, particularly so in architecture schools. For students, it’s a fearful word when tutors and instructors point out a lack of it for it can apply to many things. Unless both parties share a frame of reference for how the terms are being used, accusations of inconsistency are taken with a grain of salt, much like that other juror banality “I think you’ve missed an opportunity here.” What is Consistency?

Of the 16,777,216 aesthetic signatures, Consistency is when the three Surface attributes of Colour, Pattern and Shape exhibit the same effect. In slot machine terms, it’s cherries for the leftmost three wheels and whatever for the others. This means that there are 16 x 163 = 665,536 architectures we can think of as having it – roughly one in 25. Consistency is therefore rare, but not that rare. Here’s 16 of those 665,536.

The three leftmost attributes – the blue columns – are the Surface attributes and when they all exhibit the same effect we have what’s called A Style. Architectural styles are powerful things because each of the Surface attributes evoke the same notions. In the previous post in this series, I said it’s no accident that the Colour, Pattern and Shape of many Modernist buildings have this quality I call 2: DETACH, and that their set of surface attributes can be summarized as 222. If we were to think of Modernism as a style, then that style could be dissected as each of the Surface attributes looking different from what’s around them and, at the same time, evoking a consistent notion of them being different. White meant “modern”, lack of fussy ornament meant “modern”, a boxy architecture of (dominant) horizontals and (less dominant) verticals meant “modern”. All three Surface attributes are pressing the same buttons. This is Consistency in architecture. Consistency through Detach (222) is the style known as Modernism.

Consistency in architecture means the essential minimum of elements required to define and identify a style are in place. There’s no way of placing or sizing a building that’s peculiar to Modernism, Postmodernism, Deconstructivism or Parametricism. Styles say nothing about where a building is, how it relates to its surroundings, or how big it is. Here’s another building that can be described as consistent, and as Modernist, even though it’s not white. Here, the consistent notion is of “artificial” as opposed to “natural”. It’s also a 222.


But other effects can also produce Consistency. In this next example, the Colour, Pattern and Shape attributes of the lighthouse are all different from those of the surroundings. The shared notion is that they have all been chosen because of that (Idea of Unite) to make the building more noticeable (Idea of Separate). This is always a good thing for a lighthouse. This is Consistency achieved through the effect JUXTAPOSE (CCC).

Say what you like about our friends the flying saucer building, but they have Consistency through aesthetic effect 8:ALIENATE in that these buildings have Colour, Pattern and Shape, that 1) looks different from what it around it, 2) evoke notions of being different (i.e. coming from somewhere else – possibly the future) and 3) appear to not be those of a building.

What’s important with these qualities is the notions evoking the respective effects are shared by the three or two attributes. In other words, a single notion encapsulates two or three other notions – such as with the notion of Modern. The notion of a flying saucer building encapsulates an Idea of Separate (i.e. not from around here) and an Idea of Negate (viz. not being a building) at the same time. It’s important that the different attributes evoke the same notion. [I don’t know why this is more powerful, but intuitively it makes sense.]

Consistency

  • Consistency is when the three Surface characteristics of Colour, Pattern and Shape all exhibit the same effect.
  • These architectures create strong visual impressions. The depth or complexity of those impressions depends upon the number of types of idea in the consistent effect.
  • ‘Heroic’ Modernism had Colour, Pattern and Shape each looking different and evoking notions of artificial. Any building with an aesthetic signature beginning with 222 is likely to be a Modernist building.
  • Architectural invention tends to focus on manipulating surface characteristics as there is more scope to contrive when compared with Position, Alignment and Size.
  • 16 x 163 = 65,536 architectures have Consistency.

Importance

Importance is when the position and alignment of a building have a visual unity with surrounding landscape features. Throughout history, this has represented power and authority. These unities typically involve symmetry and axes. They aren’t limited to two dimensions as religious and governmental buildings often have associations involving differences of height. Importance and Consistency are mutually independent. Importance is exhibited by 8* x 164 = 524,288 architectures – it’s relatively easy to achieve. [*The 8 comes about because only eight of the 16 effects have UNITE at their core.]


We recognize Importance immediately for it has that combination of axiality and symmetry known as “formality” or some classical variant. Importance is independent of Consistency but, as we will see later, can co-exist. Here’s three more examples. The contextual landscape feature is often man-made, occasionally on purpose.

Strength

Strength is three consistent groups. All three Surface characteristics exhibit the same effect and the two Placement characteristics also exhibit the same effect which doesn’t have to be the same as for the Surface attributes. Strength is thus the union of Consistency and Importance. (The Size characteristic is always a consistent group of one.) Strength is exhibited by 16 x 16 x 16 = 4,096 architectures. This is becoming rare, but we immediately recognize that we’re experiencing something. Here’s two examples, both quite different.

Kingdom Tower in Riyadh has the surface weirdness of a flying saucer building (888) coupled with a “formal” positioning and alignment (55), though some may say “authoritarian”. Moreover, the difference in Size also says something (E), possibly the same thing.

The Surface attributes of this church are an example of Consistency through the effect 2:DETACH, yet it is not a Modernist building. [All Modernist buildings have Consistency through DETACH yet all buildings having Consistency through DETACH are not Modernist.]

Emphasis

Emphasis is when there is a single, non-identical effect. Five of the six attributes all evoke the same effect and the non-identical one is isolated and emphasized. This is easy to understand. Emphasis is exhibited by 16 x 16 = 256 architectures. Both these examples show Emphasis for the Colour attribute although it is generated by different combinations of effects. There are 256 such combinations of effects but, to repeat, there still remains an infinite number of notions that can generate the individual effects. In other words, architectural “creativity” or “expression” is not compromised. It’s just not the mystery we’re used to it being presented as.


2020

This is the last post of 2020. In the past I’ve done top-tens but not recently as it’s cheap and easy content. I’ve thanked everybody who’s emailed me and made my life richer and the blog better for it, and I’ll do that again now. Thank you all! In previous years I’ve also apologized to people whose questions I haven’t yet responded to and, shamefully, I’ll do that again and you’ll have to take my word for it that I haven’t forgotten. When all that’s done what’s there left to do? It’s always nice to end a year with positive thoughts that make sense of where we’re coming from and where we’re going.

We English speakers see the future as “in front” of us and the past as “behind”. It’s what we do. Our language is how we perceive the world and make sense of it. I learned last week that the Chinese word for next, when qualifying time words such as day, week or year, translates as below while the word for previous translates as above. Last week is ‘the week above’ and next week is ‘the week below’. I’m still getting my head around there being an other way of comprehending the passage of Time, that it “flows” from down to up and not front to back. I’ve no idea what this means. All I know is that this way of spatializing the world existed long before the word spatializing was invented and Chinese go to work and go home, buy and sell things, and write songs and poetry unpeturbed by notions of spatial practice. It’s true, the English language does have its colloquialism dip one toe in the water but that’s just a way of approaching some arbitrary option and not the inevitable future. Whether the future is hurtling towards us from below or in front of us, I’d still prefer to jump into it feet first than crash headlong into it.

With that thought, I’d like to wish us all a Happy and feet-first New Year!


[Cite]

The 2007 Draft: Introduction
The 2007 Draft: Derivation
The Architecture of Architectures (2007 ~ )
0: SEPARATE
1: UNITE
2: DETACH
3: ATTACH

4: EXTRACT
5: COMBINE
6: DISGUISE
7: MERGE
8: ALIENATE
9: ASSIMILATE
A: DIFFERENTIATE
B: INTEGRATE
C: JUXTAPOSE
D: CONFLATE
E: DESIGNATE
F: ASSOCIATE
Notes & Exceptions
Words & Buildings
More Words
Beauty
Afterword

Words and Buildings

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 this framework would regard architectural aesthetics as simply a figure-ground relationship between a building as a MASS – as in something solid – set in surroundings of some kind. It never claimed to say anything about SPACE which I expect is a separate dimension but let’s just deal with MASS for now. TIME is a third separate dimension in which buildings have an existence but how figure and ground change (or don’t change) over time is another subject for another framework and another dimension. For now, while we’re still dealing with MASS, the only thing to remember is that the aesthetic signature of a building will not stay constant over time.

It decays, not in the negative sense of tooth decay or the decay of social or societal norms but in the neutral sense of radioactive decay in which complex and unstable elements can have multiple and competing paths to decay into less unstable elements. Uranium-238 is neither better nor worse than Thorium 234. They’re just different and betterness or worseness is not a useful frame of reference.

Uncertainty and Disquiet were framed in terms of the fundamental premises of the framework remaining unestablished. Both were exceptions proving the rule. If this framework is to be worthy of the name The Architecture of Architectures, then it must be possible to frame other elements of architects’ vocabulary in terms of it. These are the words we use when we talk about architecture, teach it, and frame and communicate our responses to it. This vocabulary of terms and meanings is far from stable, or even defined. Words such as form, space, organic and minimal are continually redefined and become the content of discourse rather than tools that are supposed to facilitate it. As an architect, Ludwig Wittgenstein was notoriously difficult to work with but, as a philosopher, his dictum “if something can’t be said simply then it’s not worth saying” is worth remembering. This framework fixes the meaning of words commonly used in architecture. These are the words we have and I only provide the beginnings of a glossary here so we can get on with talking sensibly about architectural aesthetics and not mistake quibbling over meanings for meaningful discussion or, worse, discourse. The real arguments are to be had in the relative relevance and importance of aesthetic Ideas of Separate, Unite and Negate, not the words we use to talk about them.

Massing

This word is commonly used to denote a first look at the volume of a building once the various area components of the program have been assembled but, as an instructor, this may just be my wishful thinking. For me, massing is a link between the inner program and the outer appearance but this is the application of knowledge (of a probable inside) to the volume seen externally. “Expressing” these inner workings in terms of volumes is only understandable if one already knows what they are. In the terms of this framework, massing is an Idea of Unite, that links (inner) Space with (outer) Mass. It is therefore outside the scope of this framework that deals only with buildings as a single mass seen from outside. This is not a limitation. It’s just that this is only as far as I’ve got. I’ve mentioned TIME as a separate dimension in which buildings exist but I’m not so sure about SPACE. Sure, buildings exist in space, but only as objects in it. People existing inside architectural space and that’s not the same thing. We’ll leave talk of inside space and outside space for another day. In short, ‘massing’ means Shape and whether that shape evokes associations of what’s inside is irrelevant for now as the only associations admitted are those evoked by the (attributes of the) building when seen with respect to its surroundings. In this next image, Colour in this next image also carries associations of the internal program. It has meaning (for those who can interpret it).

Organic

Architecture’s relationship with Nature is a troubled one. I’ve said it before but buildings are not self-replicating and never will be. Nevertheless, the word organic continues to be used to imply many things such as

  • that a building is a natural consequence or extension of its landscape
  • that a building is natural because it has curves (unlike “unnatural” buildings that don’t)
  • that it consists of organic products and components, organically produced and assembled

The general gist seems to be that organic buildings have some sort of affinity with Nature, or at least plants because animals, rocks, trees, clouds and the water cycle don’t figure much in these notions of Nature. Basically, it’s the new Art Nouveau. Organic is an Idea of Unite and one of the more popular ones.

Scale

Size is one of the six elemental building attributes. All buildings have it but when we talk about scale we’re talking about the size of a building relative to the size of something else that is usually another building nearby or otherwise seen together, or the size of a human being. Buildings are bigger than people because they accommodate them and their activities. Large buildings like apartment and office buildings are often created by vertically repeating typical floors of the same height and, because we know how high these floors typically are, we can estimate the size of the building. Sydney Opera House has no conventional windows, balconies or other indicators of how large it is relative to a person and so as a result it had this monumental quality (i.e. like a monument). The construction of this building nearby allows us to better the size of Sydney Opera House and we’re surprised when it is not as big as we had thought.

Much the same can be said for this building where nearby automobiles are the indicators of human size and tell us exactly how big the building is. Again, it’s not as big as we thought.

We can only tell this because we know how large a person is and this is why scale is an Idea about Size that can either work aesthetically to make the building unite with or separate from its surroundings. Whether a building actually is big or small relative to what it is seen against is tangible fact and either Size to SEPARATE or Size to UNITE.

Form

The title of this post comes from Adrian Forty’s 2000 book Words and Buildings: A Vocabulary of Modern Architecture. The only thing I remember is that he wrote “whenever you hear the word ‘form’ you can be certain you’re in for a modernist discourse”. [Whenever you hear the word ‘discourse’ you can be certain you’re listening to an architecture critic or, worse, an academic.] The word ‘Form’ does mean Shape’ but, if it’s associated with Modernist discourse, it’s because it already contains associations for how you’re meant to understand that shape. Form is form+⍺ and that alpha is associations of modernity and progress that would make construction traditions dependent on materials, climate and handcraft seem dated and provincial. These are all Ideas of Separate in Time, but they also produced. buildings that stood in stark contrast to their surroundings. The word ‘form’ then it not neutral. It is more than difference – it is Detachment and is no accident that the Colour, Pattern and Shape of many Modernist buildings have this quality I call 2: Detach about them, and that their set of surface attributes can be summarized as 222.

Rhythm

Rhythm is a manifestation of the surface characteristic of Pattern. Everyone’s noticed how, over the past twenty years, patterns of window openings have generally become more irregular but not necessarily less rhythmical. The shuffly windows trope came into its own in the 1990s and is still with us as shorthand to indicate that some degree of design effort has been made, even though it’s only marginally more trouble to make windows shuffle than it is to not. It’s not clear who invented it. It’s a toss-up between Gio Ponti and the Politecnico Milanese and Asnago & Vender who were unaligned. I’ll side with A&V because a rhythm is only a rhythm if it’s broken.

Proportion

This is another of those loaded terms. Architecture instructors are known to say things such as “there’s something wrong with the proportions” to dutifully nodding students but what they usually mean is that the proportions aren’t those conventionally sanctions – i.e. The Golden Mean, The Golden Proportion, The Divine Proportion, A:B = B:A+B. It remains to be proven if, like plants and other biological forms, the human eye has a physiological preference for this ratio because it confers an evolutionary advantage of some kind but we do know that the identification and appreciation of this particular ratio is learned. It is a cultural artifact. Stripped of all this baggage, proportion is just a set of Size relationships between components of a Pattern or Shape.


Even this brief look at some of the words in common usage in architectural schools and offices is sufficient to make us look closely at the words we use and ask what notions of Separate, Unite and Negate come already embedded in them. The word scale, for example, usually comes loaded with the notion of human scale and its indicators, with the absence of such indicators usually called monumental if on purpose and out of scale if not. If architects disagree on what words mean it’s because these embedded notions are not explicit. Despite all the problems and misunderstandings this causes, I suspect this language must have evolved to solve the problem of architecture being too simple and easily understood by non-practitioners.

The next post in this series will show how the architectural concepts of consistency, importance, strength and emphasis are defined in terms of this framework, and the one after will bring the sixteen types of architectural beauty together in one post.

[cite]


The 2007 Draft: Introduction
The 2007 Draft: Derivation
The Architecture of Architectures (2007 ~ )
0: SEPARATE
1: UNITE
2: DETACH
3: ATTACH

4: EXTRACT
5: COMBINE
6: DISGUISE
7: MERGE
8: ALIENATE
9: ASSIMILATE
A: DIFFERENTIATE
B: INTEGRATE
C: JUXTAPOSE
D: CONFLATE
E: DESIGNATE
F: ASSOCIATE
Notes & Exceptions
Words & Buildings
Some Qualities
Beauty
Afterword

Notes & Exceptions

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 and how they are all related. Their place in the framework is both description and explanation.

This post is the first of four that will use this framework to describe various architectural phenomena. This post will describe exceptions and why they are. The second will narrow the meaning of words commonly used in architectural studios and offices. The third and fourth posts will describe combinations of attributes that have special meaning for architectural aesthetics. In all cases, known aesthetic phenomena will be explained in terms of this framework. This post will concentrate on aesthetic phenomena that are external the framework yet can still be explained because they are external to it. These are the phenomena that work to subvert or diminish the factors that influence our aesthetic perception of a building by

  1. Altering the tangible relationship (any or all of the attributes of) that building has with its surroundings and/or, as a result of that,
  2. Lessening the power of that building to evoke the anticipated Ideas of Separate and/or Unite and/or Negate.

CHANGE

CHANGE is not an aesthetic quality but just a word that says nothing stays the same forever – a reminder to not look for longevity in aesthetics or anything else. Fundamental to this framework is the tangible relationship a building has with its surroundings but no building is timeless and nor is its surroundings. Formerly large sites are subdivided and development encroaches and overshadows. Once grand buildings no longer look so grand. Splendid isolation vanishes. Many commentators thought these apartments were built a bit too close to Sydney Opera House and, as can be imagined from the left image, lessened the delight to be had by observers approaching it on foot. Persons are definitely denied opportunities to look at the building, but more critical aesthetic damage is done by there now being a reference for human scale present and working to diminish the monumentality of the building.

History is not short of other examples. Wright’s idea of the Robie House evoking notions of the prairies may have been brilliant marketing but, in suburban Chicago, its aesthetic sustainability was doomed from the start. Architecture history books used to have bad airbrushings, proving the world of architecture preferred representation to reality long before post-modernism.

FASHION

Call it the zeitgeist if you will, but ideas change more quickly and the aesthetic effect of a building is neither stable over time or even in space as buildings rarely evoke the same ideas from whichever direction they are viewed. Most have a good side, a more flattering angle. I used the term aesthetic decay to describe how buildings lose their ability to evoke the same ideas. Just as Thorium decays into Uranium 233, this is neither good nor bad. It is just one thing changing into another. Architectural fashions change and complex effects decay into simpler and less volatile ones when a characteristic of a building no longer evokes the same component Ideas of Separate and/or Unite and/or Negate.

This is guaranteed to happen if the Idea of Separate is the notion of novelty, innovation, avant-garde or some other variant of newness. The fashionable becomes the dated or passé. Dated buildings of reputed architects can only be rebranded as important examples of early work.

Although less common, it’s also possible for buildings no longer new to be “seen in a new light” and for at least some characteristic to be described by a more complex effect having additional ideas of Separate, Associate or Negate not anticipated by their designers. In this way, buildings that have either slipped from history or perhaps never entered it are aesthetically repurposed to create new content for our era in which there is never too much content to monetize. Many a modern book is designed as a receptacle for a collection of academic essays doing just this.

UNCERTAINTY

The premises of this framework state that all buildings have the six tangible and mutually independent attributes of Colour, Pattern, Shape, Position, Alignment and Size. This being true is what makes the framework applicable to all buildings past, present and future. However, sometimes we simply don’t know what we are looking at and UNCERTAINTY is when it’s not possible to definitively say whether something is one attribute or some other. For example, it’s difficult to tell whether this corner of Hiroshi Hara’s Kyoto Station is Pattern or Shape. It’s more three-dimensional than the curtain wall “behind” but, all the same, not as three-dimensional as it seems. The bas-relief is disquieting, as if we are watching the moment where Pattern morphs into Shape.

Bas relief has a long history in art and architecture but Art Deco and later examples emphasized the flatness of the shapes in relief. Something similar is happening with these are-they-or-aren’t-they 3D shapes that don’t convince, as if they’d half-prefer to remain in elevation.

The MTC Southbank Centre in Melbourne by Australian outfit ARM is a more self-conscious example of an illusory three dimensionality sometimes described as “playful”.

If you want to induce a sense of uncertainty in a viewer, then all you need do is confuse the difference between any two of the six building attributes. This is easiest for Pattern and Shape because differences in Pattern allow us to perceive (and mis-perceive) Shape.

DISQUIET

DISQUIET we saw in the post 0: SEPARATE in which I posed the question “Is this building the same colour as the sky or not?” A child might say yes it is.

And is this next building transparent or not? Again, a child might say yes, and many an architect might too but many other people might not. How different people make these fundamental judgements about what they are actually seeing are at the heart of many an aesthetic disagreement. This framework provides some essential concepts and vocabulary for talking about them.

DISQUIET also occurs when a person tries to hold conflicting opinions at the same time, or swings from one to the other without resolution. Yet, at a different time of day or under different meteorological conditions, the same person might have no trouble deciding. 

If for some reason you want to induce a sense of disquiet in a viewer, then all you need do is make it difficult for them to decide if one or more of the six building attributes is acting to SEPARATE or UNITE.

UNCERTAINTY and DISQUIET are two phenomena that can be explained by how they don’t fit into the framework. There may be others and, though I hope they too will be exceptions that prove the rule, I simply don’t know. Conventionally, Uncertainty and Disquiet have been explained by instructors and commentators claiming “the proportion’s not right” or “it’s out of scale” but this framework provides explanations more convincing, consistent and universal than traditional ones founded in dogma.

This post has focussed on exceptions this framework can explain only tangentially. The following two posts in this series will focus on the guts of what this framework is about. The next post will show how the framework defines – and at the same time explains, as any good framework should – key architectural concepts such as Consistency, Importance, Strength and Emphasis. The penultimate post will summarize how this framework defines AND EXPLAINS architectural Beauty, all sixteen types of it. It won’t be a big finish. When I began this project I never expected the floating world of architectural aesthetics and beauty to be simple, but it turned out to be nowhere near as complex and unfathomable as I’d thought or, more to the point, been led to believe.

[cite]


The 2007 Draft: Introduction
The 2007 Draft: Derivation
The Architecture of Architectures (2007 ~ )
0: SEPARATE
1: UNITE
2: DETACH
3: ATTACH

4: EXTRACT
5: COMBINE
6: DISGUISE
7: MERGE
8: ALIENATE
9: ASSIMILATE
A: DIFFERENTIATE
B: INTEGRATE
C: JUXTAPOSE
D: CONFLATE
E: DESIGNATE
F: ASSOCIATE
Notes & Exceptions
Words & Buildings
More Words
Beauty
Afterword