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  • "Dancing in Fetters": How Can Architecture Be Poetic? Based On Hillier and Sakellaridou's Argument

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    The document discusses how architecture can be poetic in a similar way to poetry. It argues that architecture, like poetry, uses formal structures or "fetters" to create meaning and aesthetic experiences for those interacting with it. During the design process, an architect must first establish a clear formal structure and then introduce ambiguity, just as a poet uses words in unexpected ways. It also notes that an architect's style evolves over time, as their personal idiom is first established through strong rules and then innovated upon through new design elements, challenging established orders while maintaining coherence, akin to a poet "dancing in fetters". The document concludes that balancing pre-existing structures with creativity allows architecture to achieve poetic expression through its forms.

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    The document discusses how architecture can be poetic in a similar way to poetry. It argues that architecture, like poetry, uses formal structures or "fetters" to create meaning and aesthetic experiences for those interacting with it. During the design process, an architect must first establish a clear formal structure and then introduce ambiguity, just as a poet uses words in unexpected ways. It also notes that an architect's style evolves over time, as their personal idiom is first established through strong rules and then innovated upon through new design elements, challenging established orders while maintaining coherence, akin to a poet "dancing in fetters". The document concludes that balancing pre-existing structures with creativity allows architecture to achieve poetic expression through its forms.

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    "Dancing in Fetters": How Can Architecture Be Poetic? Based On Hillier and Sakellaridou's Argument

    Uploaded by

    王梓桐
    The document discusses how architecture can be poetic in a similar way to poetry. It argues that architecture, like poetry, uses formal structures or "fetters" to create meaning and aesthetic experiences for those interacting with it. During the design process, an architect must first establish a clear formal structure and then introduce ambiguity, just as a poet uses words in unexpected ways. It also notes that an architect's style evolves over time, as their personal idiom is first established through strong rules and then innovated upon through new design elements, challenging established orders while maintaining coherence, akin to a poet "dancing in fetters". The document concludes that balancing pre-existing structures with creativity allows architecture to achieve poetic expression through its forms.

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    of 2

    Zitong Wang 31.10.

    2021

    "Dancing in fetters"
    How can architecture be poetic? Based on Hillier and Sakellaridou’s argument

    Bliss Perry, in his book A Study of Poetry, criticized the influence between poets, saying
    “They love to dance in these fetters, and even when wearing the same fetters as another
    poet.” Wen Yiduo, a Chinese poet and scholar quote the metaphor 'dancing in fetters' to
    interpret a relationship between poetic form and poem composition. He argued that 'the
    more masterful a poet is, the more gracefully he will dance in his fetter. ' Only poetaster
    resent the poetic form (Wen, Y. 1893). A similar process, as poem composition, can be
    found in architecture design as Hillier regards architecture as a poetic technique (Hillier,
    W.R.G., 2011, p148). I think architecture share similar properties with poetry in two aspects.

    First, architecture shares a similar sense of aesthetic with poems. according to Hillier,
    significance takes priority over signification meaning, we derive the meaning outside
    architecture like social meaning and aesthetic from the building itself (Hillier, W.R.G., 2011,
    p128). For aesthetic, it creates ambiguity in simple meaning and complexity in possible
    adumbrate meaning just like the poem uses an unexpected combination of words to create
    great potentiality of meaning (Hillier, W.R.G., 2011, p147). As poems have to follow a
    continuous thread of meaning for readers to understand, the signification of architecture
    has to be based on its 'meaning'. Thus, for the design process, the various formal structure
    should first lead to a relatively correspondent and evident abstract (as a kind of 'fetters'),
    before creating ambiguity allowing people to make a free association (as a process of
    dancing).

    On the other hand, dancing in fetters can refer to a continuous oscillating and evolving
    process from forming of personal idiom to transformation and innovation. In the diachronic
    aspects of the compositional structure, the personal idiom is structured through a strong
    set of rules that underlie the major corpus of work, and through introducing new elements
    of design (Sakellaridou, I. 2011, p168). For the first few stages of forming the idiom, rules
    and elements are simply combined then the interrelation of rules become more complex.
    After setting the formal idiom, creativity and innovation will be added under the co-balance
    between the knowing order and unknowing experiment despite the established order being
    interrogated or destabilized (Sakellaridou, I. 2011, p174). The limitation of formal structure
    and constant order could be the fetters that you may hesitate to modify or bring in the
    transformation which is also the prerequisite of innovation and creativity.

    The former symmetry relationship between poem and architecture indicates a duality of
    significance and signification in the meaning of architectural form. The latter one indicates
    the diachronic evolvement in the formal order of personal idiom. The interrelation between
    them is what we need to apply to the practice to perform a good dance with all these pre-
    structures, priorities being assistance rather than limitation.
    Reference
    Bliss Perry，A Study of Poetry(I didn't find the reference information of the book)
    Wen, Y. (1893). Form in Poetry. translated by Randy Trumbull, Modern Chinese Literary
    Thought: Writings on Literature, 1945, 318-327.
    Hillier, W.R.G., 2011. Is architectural form meaningless: a configurational theory of generic
    meaning in architecture, and its limits. Journal of Space Syntax 2, 2 125 - 153. (2011),
    pp.Journal of Space Syntax 2, 2 125–153. (2011).
    Sakellaridou, I. (2011). Searching for order synchronic and diachronic aspects (of a
    personal case). The Journal of Space Syntax, 2(2), 154-179.

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