The Art of Architecture (Public shaming post #4)

In their article Notes around the Doppler Effect and other Moods of Modernism, Somol and Whiting argue for architecture as a discipline that goes beyond the technical understanding of the profession – dealings with form, proportion, materiality, and composition – and stretches into the political, psychological, cultural, and historical realms of societal consciousness.  They suggest that beyond objective qualities, architectural design also encompasses “qualities of sensibility, such as effect, ambiance, and atmosphere”.

I whole-heartedly agree with this assessment and value the analogy of the Doppler ripple effect of design.  Design that does not connect with the qualitative aspects of human emotion, memory, hopes, and consciousness is not memorable and certainly fails on many levels of user experience.

Design has always resided between the objective and subjective, the functional and emotional, the rational and irrational, the strategic and the beautiful – the fundamental dialectic of human psychology.  Alvar Aalto was one of the first modernists to incorporate such ideas into his work, quite contrary to his contemporaries who sought a programmatic solution to design problems.  Today, many architects have learned to value the soul of architecture and produce work that is attached to the subjective and qualitative side – the art of architecture.  Zumthor, Herzog & de Meuron, Louis Kahn and others practice(d) this black magic of architecture with powerful results.

I believe as architects we are called to be artists beyond anything else.  Artists work to prompt the unexpected, to give us new perspective, to translate emotion into form.  Anyone can design a functional building.  Anyone can meet programmatic and budgetary restrictions.  Anyone can apply “design-thinking” to a problem.  What sets us apart as a profession is the ability to inspire, to connect emotionally, to provide atmosphere, to recall memory, to imbue desire.  This is our strength and what differentiates and substantiates our profession.

Aalto Theatre in Essen (Model)