THE ART OF ARCHITECTURE

Wherever you find people gathered together collectively inhabiting some part of our world you will also find rules governing their use of space. Some of these rules may be purely a matter of local social convention, but many are a reflection of both the deep-seated needs of our psyche and of the characteristics of human beings.

In our modern world most of the spaces we use have been designed for us professionally by architects, urban designers, interior designers and their ilk. It was of course not always so, nor is it so now in all societies. Before professionalism, the design and creation of space was a more social and vernacular process seamlessly integrated with all other aspects of a culture.

In our sort of world, space has also become a matter of economics, of technology and of art. Many design theoreticians and critics write about architectural space as if it were some entirely abstract substance. They discuss such ideas as form, proportion, rhythm and color as if they were parts of a private language used by designers and design critics. Through such criticism, architecture and the spaces it divides and encloses become seen as a refined art to be appreciated by the educated connoisseur. This is of course an entirely understandable and reasonable position.

It is possible to argue that there is a distinction to be drawn between architecture and mere building. If we accept this position, then buildings can probably only become architecture once they exhibit characteristics that we might also use to identify art.