DBA
Deconstructing Beauty in
Architecture
SCCV 2013
Sweden’s most beautiful house?
All buildings must be executed in such a way as to
take account of durability, utility and beauty.
Vitruvius
To describe a building as beautiful therefore suggests
more than a mere aesthetic fondness; it implies an
attraction to the particular way of life this structure is
promoting through its roof, door handles, window
frames, staircase and furnishings. A feeling of beauty is a
sign that we have come upon a material articulation of
certain ideas of a good life.
Alain de Botton
The Architecture of Happiness, 2006, p72
The Idea
The contemporary context
Assumption of society
Assumption of the human being
A way of life
The Building
Scale, color, light, textures, materials, form,
proportions, symmetry
Cost
Expression of the idea
References/ associations
The Material
Usefulness, work performed; shelter, activities
The Aesthetic
Individual level, experience, reactions, emotions, feelings
The Symbolic
Social level, social/ cultural context, associations, meaning, identity,
communication
"Architecture is always marshalling possibilities from all
directions to do something that hasn't happened
before,” … "Not for the hell of it, not for your ego but to
create a degree of progress and make life more
adventurous and give a sense of drive to society as a
whole.”
Rem Koolhaas
Experiencing architecture
Solids and cavities
Color
Scale and proportion
Rhythm
Texture
Daylight
Hearing
Steen Eiler Rasmussen, Experiencing
Architecture, 1959/ 1992
FORM
AND
SUBSTANCE
FUNCTION
AND
SIGNIFICANCE
Per Åman, PhD
The buildings
• Chosen to represent different aspects of
’beauty’
– Classicism
– (Romantic)
– Modernism
– Post-modernism
An example
Schloss Neuschwanstein, Bavaria, Germany
Buildings assigned, in group order:
1
Villa Rotonda, Andrea Palladio, 1570, Italy
2
Villa Savoie, le Corbusier, 1929, Paris, France
3
Guggenheim Museum, Frank Gehry, 1990s, Bilbao, Spain
4
Seattle Central Library, Seattle USA, Rem
Koolhaas & Joshua Prince-Ramus, 2004
Fallingwater, 1935-39, Frank Lloyd Wright, Bear Run, Pennsylvania, USA
Kölner Dom, Cologne, Germany
Monticello, Thomas Jefferson, ca 1772,
Charlottesville, Va, USA
Farnsworth House, Plano, Illinois, USA, Mies van der
Rohe, 1945-51
The Forbidden City, Beijing, China