Dominance, Dependence, and the Harmony in between

 

When I think of architecture I don’t necessarily or more so automatically think of dominance and dependence. I do, however, think of symmetry and asymmetry. After reading The Structure of the Ordinary: Form and Control in the Built Environment by John Habraken, I am now. Typically the dependence on the built environment is somewhat of an unspoken rule or situation. A case in point would be the example given in the text of the houses in a city block. You can easily make changes to one or many of the houses in said city block without it having or requiring a change to the street. However, if you want or need to make a change to the street itself, that sets off a trickle down effect on one or many of the houses on the block as some might end up having to be removed to accommodate the new change. And here comes the role of dominance. In this situation, the street is the higher-level player and the houses are the lower-level player. And in true dominant form, the higher-level player makes the lower-level player conform to its needs.  The city block asserts its dominance over the houses, while at the same time, the houses are dependent on the street to even be called/considered a city block in the first place. This is a common theme in architecture that happens often, but could sometimes be overlooked. A typical operation in the world of architecture is the furniture layout. It’s not often that you will see a whole building function dictated by the furniture layout because normally it’s the building that dictates the furniture layout. Therefore the building exerts its dominance on the furniture all while the furniture shows its dependence on the form or configuration of the building.

 

I also found this reading interesting because I’ve never really seen this dominance/dependence relationship be compared to the game of chess. But after reading about it, I see the correlation and how much architecture is exactly like chess. There is plenty of buildings around the world that force everything around it to adjust to its design. We have seen far too many times when people are and have been displaced from their homes all for the betterment of the community and most of the time it is hard to imagine that what is occurring is for the greater good. And just like in the previous case, the lower-level player has submitted to the higher-level player. In the world of architecture dominance and dependence are good things to have, we just need to be able to find that happy medium to create a cohesive harmony.