Architecture Mentalities And Meaning

In order to function, architectural theory and practice must be shaped to suit current cultural, economic, and political forces. Thus, architecture embodies reductive logic that conditions the treatment of human and social processes – which raises the question of how to define objectivity for architectural mentalities that must conform to a set of immediate conditions. This book focuses on meaning, and on the physical and mental processes that define life in built environments. The potential to draw knowledge from aesthetics, psychology, political economy, philosophy, geography, and sociology is offset by the fact that architectural logic is inevitably reductive, cultural, socio-economic, and political. However, despite the duty to conform, it is argued that the treatment of human processes, and the understanding of architectural mentalities, can benefit from interdisciplinary linkages, small freedoms, and cracks in a system of imperatives that can yield the means of greater objectivity. This is valuable reading for students and researchers interested in architectural theory as a working reality, and in the relationships between architecture and other fields.

"This provocative book is a significant new contribution to the literature of architectural humanism. It brilliantly demonstrates how our psychological well-being is far more profoundly dependent upon our architectural environment than is generally acknowledged. Clifford B. Moller, expert in architectural research and design, is uniquely aware of the key concepts of our time, not only in the art of creating the spaces in which we live but also in sociology and psychiatry. He is thus able to explore the sources of emotional health and emotional disorders and to show these psychological processes are constantly shaped by man's interactions with the world he makes. In illuminating this reciprocal relationship, Architectural Environment and Our Mental Health establishes a basic re-definition of the meaning of architecture, and shows how the relief of the social ills that increasingly beset out cities lies in a clarified appreciation of this dynamic relationship. Mr. Moller's thoughtful grasp of the many complex problems involved, and his wide range of knowledge in the several related fields, enable him to distill the pertinent ideas of such diverse authorities as Robert Coles, John Dewey, Erich Fromm, Lawrence Kubie, Lewis Mumford, Bruno Zevi, etc. A controversial aspect of this book is its recommendation of an "anti-form" emphasis in design - an inevitable extension of its main argument. The author shows how preoccupation with form for its own sake can only imperil our achievement of the humanistic goals we seek to realize in reshaping our urban environment." --

This book brings together anthropologists, architects, psychologists, political and environmental scientists and landscape architects to discuss Amos Rapoport's seminal work on the cultural significance of the built environment.

Do We Need Architects? Journey Beneath the Surface of Architecture is a journey of discovery that takes place over twenty-five years of my life, from exploring my own motivations to become an architect, learning about architecture, and the changing environment of practicing architecture to experiencing the impact of architecture on the built environment. The story investigates the meaning, perception, and relevance of architecture in todays world. Have you ever had a favorite building, park, or square? A place that affects your mood? All of us at some stage have experienced the impact of architecture and landscape on the way we perceive reality. Let me invite you on a journey that examines what architects do, as well as the legacy of the architectural process that influences the environment, visiting places and exploring architectural interventions by taking them out of the glossy images shown in the architecture books and industry journals and placing them in the context of their urban or natural setting. It is always as a found object, always in the present, examining the impact of humanity on the environment and the contribution architecture has made and is continuing to make to the everyday environment where we all live, work, and play.

Using empathy, as established by the Vienna School of Art History, complemented by insights on how the mind processes visual stimuli, as demonstrated by late 19th-century psychologists and art theorists, this book puts forward an innovative interpretative method of decoding the forms and spaces of Modern buildings. It proposes that Modern architecture is too diverse to be reduced to a few common formal or ornamental features. Instead, by relying on the viewer’s innate psycho-physiological perceptive abilities, the sensual and intuitive understandings of composition, form, and space are emphasized.

How architecture can move beyond the contemporary enthusiasms for the technically sustainable and the formally dazzling to enhance our human values and capacities. Architecture remains in crisis, its social relevance lost between the two poles of formal innovation and technical sustainability. In Attunement, Alberto Pérez-Gómez calls for an architecture that can enhance our human values and capacities, an architecture that is connected—attuned—to its location and its inhabitants. Architecture, Pérez-Gómez explains, operates as a communicative setting for societies; its beauty and its meaning lie in its connection to human health and self-understanding. Our physical places are of utmost importance for our well-being. Drawing on recent work in embodied cognition, Pérez-Gómez argues that the environment, including the built environment, matters not only as a material ecology but because it is nothing less than a constituent part of our consciousness. To be fully self-aware, we need an external environment replete with meanings and emotions. Pérez-Gómez views architecture through the lens of mood and atmosphere, linking these ideas to the key German concept of Stimmung—attunement—and its roots in Pythagorean harmony and Vitruvian temperance or proportion. He considers the primacy of place over space; the linguistic aspect of architecture—the voices of architecture and the voice of the architect; architecture as a multisensory (not pictorial) experience, with Piranesi, Ledoux, and Hejduk as examples of metaphorical modeling; and how Stimmung might be put to work today to realize the contemporary possibilities of attunement.

Every thing we encounter has for us meaning. It is what we infer as a particular understanding of the thing. But we also provide meaning by how we live and what we produce. This implies process and result, also in architecture. Decision making is involved with judgments on theoretical and practical issues. The activities are driven by factors of purpose, context and realization. This text proceeds from explaining philosophical foundations of meaning to interpreting physical designs of architecture. At the center is design thinking which has rational and emotional components, making it profoundly aesthetic. The concept of design narratives is developed as the dialog between the content and the form of projects. The text is profusely supported by illustrations in color and hyperlinked with extensive references.

Contents Chora: The Space of Architectural Representation - Alberto Pérez-Gómez - The Measure of Expression: Physiognomy and Character in the Nouvelle Méthode of Jean-Jacques Lequeu - Jean-François Bédard - Michelangelo: The Image of the Human Body, Artifice, and Architecture - Helmut Klassen - Architecture as Site of Reception - Part I: Cuisine, Frontality, and the Infra-thin - Donald Kunze - Fictional Cities - Graham Livesey - Instrumentality and the Organic Assistance of Looms - Indra Kagis McEwen - Space and Image in Andrey Tarkovsky's "Nostalgia": Notes on a Phenomenology of Architecture in Cinema - Juhani Pallasmaa - The Momentary Modern Magic of the Panorama - Stephen Parcell - The Building of a Horizon - Louise Pelletier - Anaesthetic Induction: An Excursion into the World of Visual Indifference - Natalija Subotincic. The essays in this collection explore architectural form and content in the hope of finding new and better alternatives to traditionally accepted practices.

Frank Lloyd Wright first noted the affinity between modern Western architecture and the philosophy of the ancient Chinese writer Laotzu. In this classic work, Amos Ih Tiao Chang expands on that idea, developing the parallel with the aid of architectural drawings and Chinese paintings. Now with a new foreword by David Wang, this book reveals the vitality of intangible, or negative, elements. Chang writes that these qualities make architectonic forms "come alive, become human, naturally harmonize with one another, and enable us to experience them with human sensibility." The Tao of Architecture continues to be essential reading for understanding the intersection between architecture and philosophy.