This article was originally published on Archiol as the 3rd prize winner of the Archiol Art & Architecture competition.

Bored. I’m so bored. Looking around my apartment I can see how boring its design is. Walking around the city I can see how boring and repetitive the new buildings are. I am bored including when looking at proposals by other students in my design studio. Most people, if not everyone, would agree that architecture requires a fair amount of creativity from its professionals. Same goes for art. Yet, it’s uncommon to consider architecture as an artform. It’s uncommon for students or professionals to blend architecture with art. Even in those rare cases when it does happen, the authors tend to assign an explanation, a meaning to the design. As if architecture can’t be enjoyed without explicitly understanding what the architect was trying to communicate. Why are we so obsessed with finding a meaning behind everything? Why can’t architecture be contemplated as a work of art where everytime you look at it it speaks to you in a different way; on a different level?

“The purpose of their art and their buildings was not to remind us of what life was typically like, but rather to keep before our eyes how it might optimally be, so as to move us fractionally closer to fulfilment and virtue. Sculptures and buildings were to assist us in bringing the best of ourselves to the fore. They were to embalm our highest aspirations.” ^a

I’ve previously said that art requires a fair amount of creativity. Though creating art is not just about materializing those creative ideas; it can also be functional. Art is also there to excite us, to fire up our imagination, to make us question how we live, how we interact with each other or how we do things. It’s there to stir up certain emotions and, in some cases, influence us towards taking specific actions. Alain De Botton, in his book “The Architecture of Happiness”, brings up the idea of a work of art as a “piece of propaganda”. It becomes a propaganda “whenever it uses its resources to direct us towards something, insofar as it attempts to enhance our sensitivity and our readiness to respond favourably to any end or idea.” There’s nothing bad with the fact that art has this power over us, as long as the idea it wants us to respond favourably to is a positive one. Architecture isn’t the only one who can be functional here. Clearly, art can be too. Same way art can be functional, architecture can be a form of creative expression too. Not only can, but should. We should recognize that architecture can also become this so-called “piece of propaganda”. Wouldn’t it be beautiful to live in a city where the buildings aren’t just glass towers all around but rather buildings that speak to us? Buildings that, as we look at them, make us feel a certain way. Making us feel joy or peace. Buildings that make us fly with our imagination as we try to understand its various complex parts. Reawakening the little child within us. Just take a moment to imagine that. 

In the same book, Alain De Botton perfectly portrays the relationship between art and architecture in the past. These two were closely related; both hoping to provoke a certain type of emotion/feeling within those observing them. Architecture was a way of creating art not just with habitable spaces. But, at one point architecture started focusing more on its functional part, forgetting the creative expression it once had. Welcome to the Industrial Revolution! Even though it may have brought its benefits (albeit also questionable), it definitely caused architecture to distance itself from art. This, combined with the up and coming “fathers” of modern architecture, meant a definite separation between art and architecture. Here is when Ann Sussman and Katie Chen’s article titled “The Mental Disorders that Gave Us Modern Architecture” published on Common Edge becomes relevant. What I found interesting regarding this article is when they mentioned that Le Corbusier “met the diagnostic criteria for autism spectrum disorder (ASD).” People on the spectrum often struggle with hyperarousal (also known as “visual overload”). As a result of this, “people with ASD like to simplify a scene”. No wonder then that his buildings were completely stripped from any ornamental elements. His need to simplify a scene led to a simplification of architecture. Of course, world war also contributed to this, affecting Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe with “post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)”. The need to quickly rebuild a city after such destruction, coupled with PTSD and ASD, meant architecture needed to focus more on the construction of buildings that required less thinking and less time (i.e., mass production). Less is more? Yes, but only for some. Don’t impose your “less is more” ideas on the rest of us. 

“But the new tenants had a very different idea of beauty. It was not they who had had their fill of tradition and luxury, of gentleness and refinement, nor they who were bored by the regional idiom or the detailed carvings of older buildings.” ^a

Even though architecture serves practical purposes, it is also filled with ideas and potentials. As architects and future architects, we have to rebuild the relationship between architecture and art. Undo the devastating actions committed by the fathers of modern architecture and create an architecture that is diverse, vibrant and stimulating (both emotionally and intellectually). The accompanied illustration is a way of exploring the relationship between functionality (often associated with architecture) and freedom (in this case creative freedom as seen in artworks). Human faces, as with everything in nature, are a result of thousands of years of evolution; of adapting itself to its context and to what has best served throughout the years. In other words, it is only designed for functionality. How would our faces look if creative freedom was also part of its evolution? Of course, pushing this idea to the other extreme, would mean a face that can be considered artistic but without any functionality. Applying this idea to architecture, the goal would be to reach a point where architecture has both artistic expression and functionality. To see how far the boundaries between these two can be pushed. In a way, blurring the lines between Impracticality and Functionality. Controlled and Random. Order and Chaos. In order to achieve this, we have to rethink how we see architecture and, most importantly, how we teach architecture. If we continue teaching the same principles set forth by modern architecture, we will continue to see new (yet same old) glass towers around the world.

“Architecture is an artistic fact, an emotional phenomenon that is outside questions of construction, beyond them. Construction: that’s for making things hold together; Architecture: that’s for stirring emotion.” ^b

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References

a. De Botton, Alain: “The Architecture of Happiness”, Vintage Books, New York (2006)
b. Le Corbusier, “Toward an Architecture”, Translated by John Goodman, Getty Research Institute (2007)
c. Sussman, Ann & Chen, Katie, “The Mental Disorders that Gave Us Modern Architecture”, CommonEdge.org (2017)
d. Rowe, Colin: “The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa and Other Essays”, MIT, Cambridge (1976)