Defining Architecture

John Ruskin
• "Architecture is an art for all to learn because all are concerned with
it.”
Le Corbusier
• Architecture is the masterly, correct and magnificent play of masses
brought together in light.
Louis Kahn
• The only way you can build, the only way you can get the building into
being, is through the measurable. You must follow the laws of nature
and use quantities of brick, methods of construction, and engineering.
But in the end, when the building becomes part of living, it evokes
unmeasurable qualities, and the spirit of its existence takes over.
Norval White
• Architecture also exists without necessary assistance from an
architect; and architects sometimes create buildings which are not
architecture.
Dictionary Definition
• architecture is defined as the art, or science, of building, or as one of
the fine arts; that is to say it is concerned with the aesthetic arts as
opposed to the useful or industrial arts such as engineering.
John Ruskin and William Morris
• Building + Art = Architecture.
Conway and Roenisch
• Another way to define architecture has been through associating it
with what architects and designers build (eg., banks, hotels, office
buildings, and so on). However, in this respect too one could argue
that great works in the history of architecture, for example, the
medieval cathedrals were not built by architects but by monks and
patrons - are they - then, not architecture?
• Bernard Rudofsky's Architecture Without Architects (1965)
Conway and Roenisch
• "The word architecture derives from the Greek word for 'builder'
(archi meaning 'chier and tecton meaning 'builder') and until quite
recently, within the last 150 years, the role of the architect included
surveying and building, as well as military and civil engineering"
• "Vitruvius, the Roman architect active in the first century BC, included
a whole range of examples of civil and military engineering in his
influential ten-volume book, De Architectura.
• Similarly the important renaissance architect Palladio included
designs for civil engineering as well as for churches, palaces, farms,
and villas in his Quattro Libri dell' Architectura (1570).
• It was only with the increase of specialisation within the building
industry that the architect ceased being a tradesman and achieved
professional status, a process that in the west had its roots in the 18th
century"
Defining Architecture
• Through History
• Through Semiotics
• Through Theory
Through History
• Ten Books on Architecture, written by Vitruvius
• "historicism” Alan Colquhoun
• "historicism" can be applied to three quite separate objects:
• the first is a theory of history;
• the second, an attitude;
• The attitude is one of sympathy towards the culture and customs of the past.
• the third, an artistic practice.
• The artistic practice is sampling forms of imagery freely from the various styles, all styles
being conceived as equally valid.
Through History
• "emergent ideal“
• "History provides both the ideas that are in need of criticism and the
material out of which this criticism is forged. An architecture that is
constantly aware of its own history, but constantly critical of the
seductions of history, is what we should aim for today“Nesbitt
• What is History? E.H. Carr
• history begins today, but one of the main difficulties about studying the
recent past is the sheer volume of information available and the problem of
determining what is significant and what is not.
Through History
• "so we all need to take responsibility for it, but we can only do so
when we understand more about it. Architecture is something to be
enjoyed and shared. If it is shared more widely because more people
understand it, take it seriously and are not frightened by it, then the
chances are that the urban environment will improve and architects
will no longer be seen as responsible for all that we dislike but as part
of a team which enables us to achieve our ideas."
Through Semiotics
• Broadbent, Bunt, and Jenks
• Buildings are experienced in terms of their form, their structure, their
aesthetics and how the immediate users3 and others use them. This
constitutes the reality of one's physical experience, but buildings not
only have an existence in reality, they also have a metaphorical
existence. They express meaning and give certain messages, just as
the way people dress or furnish their homes gives other people
certain messages about them.
Through Semiotics
• "Postmodernism", they state, "was initially a reaction against the
high-rise apartment blocks, the commercial developments and the
use of concrete that is associated with modernism in the 1960s. Such
architecture alienated people, said the postmodernist, because it did
not communicate; so postmodernism set out to communicate. This it
does by borrowing styles from previous periods, or by 'quoting'
details from adjacent buildings and the surrounding environment"
Through Semiotics
• the first reading of any object is semiotic. One recognizes architecture
as being a certain kind, of a certain period, by a certain designer and
so on. Therefore, major elements of architecture, i.e., space, surface
and structure are analyzed within the semiotic categories: pragmatic,
syntactics and semantics. This enables one to penetrate much further
than mere aesthetic analyses of architecture as space.
Through Semiotics
• "social contract”
• it is a set of conventions that allows the linguistic sign to function, and
produces consensus about meaning. Nevertheless, Broadbent writes
that the social contract is absent from architecture and that this
absence is what differentiates architecture from language. Although
he maintains that buildings can "undoubtedly" be read as signs,
Broadbent notes that architecture should not just be read visually, he
stresses that architecture effects all of the senses.
Through Theory
• "the professed positions of designers [are] different from what is
practised by them".
Post-Modern
Keywords: History, complexity, ecosystem, technology.
Charles Jencks (1997)
• "General Values:
• 1- Multivalence is preferred to univalence, imagination to fancy.
• 2- 'Complexity and contradiction' are preferred to over-simplicity and
'Minimalism’.
• 3- Complexity and Chaos theories are considered more basic in
explaining nature than linear dynamics; that is, 'more of nature' is
nonlinear in behaviour than linear.
• 4- Memory and history are inevitable in DNA, language, style and the
city and are positive catalysts for invention" (1996, lecture made for
architecture students at UCLA).
Itsuko Hasegawa (1991, p. 14)
• "One of my aims is to reconsider architecture of the past, which was
adapted to the climate and the land and permitted human
coexistence with nature, and to see human beings and architecture as
part of the earth's ecosystem. This includes a challenge to propose
new design connected with new science and technology".
Post-Modern Ecology
Keywords: Revolutionary design, ecology, nature.
Eugene Tsui (1999, p. 12)
• "Evolutionary architecture can be defined as an architecture that
implements the evolutionary practices of nature as a synthesis of
billions of years of evolution applied to immediate needs and
circumstances of form, function and purpose. It is the highest and
most advanced architectural design evolution, because it takes into
account all the various natural forces and human concerns in a way
that is ecologically and humanly productive. An evolutionary
approach to design allows us to apply principles that have developed
in nature over great spans of time without references to past and
present stylistic aesthetics".
Christopher Day (1990, p. 15)
• "Architecture has responsibilities to minimise adverse biological
effects on occupants, responsibilities to be sensitive to and act
harmoniously in the surroundings, responsibilities to the human
individualities who will come in contact with the building,
responsibilities not only in the visual aesthetic sphere and through the
outer senses but also to the intangible but perceptible 'spirit of
place'''.
Traditional
Keywords: Classic, tradition, history.
Roger Seruton (1994, p. 74):
• "Post-modernism is a reaction to modernist censoriousness. It 'plays'
with the classical and gothic details which were forbidden it by its
stern parent, and so empties them of their last vestiges of meaning.
This is not the rediscovery of history, but its dissolution ... "
Allan Greenberg (1994, p. 57)
• "A Classical approach to design fulfils architecture's most basic
responsibility: to communicate to citizens the mission of our civic,
religious, and educational institutions ... "
Late Modern
Keywords: Essence, science, knowledge .
Tadao Ando (1991, p.75)
• "Architectural creation is founded in critical action. It is never simply a
method of problem-solving whereby given conditions are reduced to
technical issues. Architectural creation involves contemplating the
origins and essence of a project's functional requirements and the
subsequent determination of its essential issue".
Richard Rogers (1985, p. 16):
• "Today problem solving involves thinking at a global scale and using
science as the tool to open up the future. Science is the means by
which knowledge is ordered in the most efficient way so as to solve
problems ... "
New Modern
Keywords: Deconstruction, appearance, media.
Peter Eisenman (1992, p. 21)
• "The electronic paradigm directs a powerful challenge to architecture
because it defines reality in terms of media and simulation, it values
appearance over existence, what can be seen over what is. Not the
seen as we formerly knew it, but rather a seeing that can no longer
interpret. Media introduce fundamental ambiguities into how and
what we see".
Mark Wigley (1988, p. 11)
• "Deconstruction is not demolition, or dissimulation. While it
diagnoses certain structural problems within apparently stable
structures, these flaws do not lead to structures' collapse. On the
contrary, deconstruction gains all its forces by challenging the very
values of harmony, unity, and stability, and proposing instead a
different view of structure: the view that the flaws are intrinsic to the
structure. They cannot be removed without destroying it; they are,
indeed, the structure".