Week 8 assignment: essay – interrelationships reflection apa format | Applied Sciences homework help
- What seem to be the primary values revealed by the rose window of Chartres? 4. How did the builders satisfy the fourth requirement of architecture: that the build-
ing be revelatory? What values does the exterior of the building reveal? 5. What is implied by the fact that the cathedral dwarfs all the buildings near it? PERCEPTION KEY Buildings 1. Select a house in your community that strikes you as ugly. Why? 2. Select a house in your community that strikes you as beautiful. Why? 3. Comment on your own home. Is the space warm, inviting, well situated in its site? Is your home architecture or engineering? Living SpaCe Living space is the feeling of the comfortable positioning of things in the environ- ment, promoting both liberty of movement and paths as directives. Taking possession of space is our first gesture as infants, and sensitivity to the position of other things is a prerequisite of life. Space infiltrates through all our senses, and our sensations of everything influence our perception of space. A breeze broadens the spaciousness of a room that opens on a garden. A sound tells us something about the surfaces and shape of that room. A cozy temperature brings the furniture and walls into intimate relationships. The smell of books gives that space a personality. With living space, since all the senses are involved, the whole body is a center. Furthermore, when we relate to a place of special value, such as the home, a “configurational center” is formed, a place that is a gathering point around which a field of interest is structured. continued jac16871_ch06_121-162.indd 125 12/11/17 11:45 AM 126
CHAPTER 6
A building that lacks artistic qualities, even if it encloses a convenient void, en- courages us to ignore it. Normally we will be blind to such a building and its space as long as it serves its practical purposes. If the roof leaks or a wall breaks down, however, we will only see the building as a damaged instrument. A well-designed building, on the other hand, brings us into living space by centering space. We be- come aware of the power and embrace of space. Such a building strikes a bargain between what it lets us do and what it makes us do. Four neCeSSitieS oF arChiteCture Architecture is a peculiarly public art because buildings generally have a social func- tion, and many buildings require public funds. More than other artists, architects must consider the public. If they do not, few of their plans are likely to materialize. Thus, architects must be psychologists, sociologists, economists, businesspeople, politicians, and courtiers. They must also be engineers, for they must be able to design structurally stable buildings. And then they need luck. Architects have to take into account four basic and closely interrelated neces- sities: technical requirements, function, spatial relationships, and revelatory re- quirements. To succeed, their structures must adjust to these necessities. As for what time will do to their creations, they can only hope and prepare with foresight. Ultimately every building is susceptible to economic demands and the whims of future taste. Technical Requirements of Architecture Of the four necessities, the technical requirements of a building are the most obvi- ous. Buildings must stand and withstand. Architects must know the materials and their potentialities, how to put the materials together, and how the materials will work on a particular site. But they are something more as well—artists. In solving their technical problems, they must also make their forms revelatory. Their build- ings must illuminate something significant that we would otherwise fail to perceive. Consider, for example, the relationship between the engineering requirements and artistic qualities of the Parthenon, 447–432 BCE (Figure 6-4). The engineering was superb, but unfortunately the building was almost destroyed in 1687, when it was being used as an ammunition dump by the Turks and was hit by a shell from a Venetian gun. Basically the technique used was post-and-lintel (or post-and-beam) construction. Set on a base, or stylobate, columns (verticals: the posts) support the entablature (horizontals: the lintel), which, in turn, supports the pediment (the tri- angular structure) and roof.