The way an artist uses a brush and a sculptor transforms a mere clay into a sculpture. An architect tries to design a space in the same way an art tends to create a space in the same way an art tends to freeze a moment in time, architecture is also a form of art that is meant to be experienced . It stands as an art form that can be experienced and relived over and over again.
The pyramids in Egypt along with their internal murals and reliefs of hieroglyphics represent this relationship between art and architecture which shows how they have relied on each other throughout history. Similarly in Greek architecture, the temple structures had ideal proportions and geometric forms. Further, the Romans enhanced Greek architecture design and added frescoes, and mosaics along with a coffered dome and interior adorned with artistic reliefs.
This shows how art and architecture have co-existed with each other however their relationship started to erode in the latter half of the 20th and 21st centuries.
The Turning Point: When Architecture Became Art
After the 20th century which paved the way for the rise of innovative architects and technological developments who started to interpret building as an art form.Relied more on the other structural shapes,materiality, light and other elements of structure rather than ornamentation.
With the birth of industrialization during the late 19th century, materials like steel, glass, and iron were used heavily which paved the way for architecture to become an art form in itself. Which leads to the elimination of the need for art in isolation. As a response to this, the arts and crafts movement came into existence to restore the creative integrity of the buildings. Examples like the Robie House by Frank Lloyd Wright, who was a pioneer who merged architecture with organic art.
Later in the (1890-1910) architects such as Antoni Gaudí and Victor Horta, to demonstrate that architecture itself could be a piece of art with buildings that were sculptural, highly decorated with curved lines, organic structures, and complex mosaics. Later the Bauhaus movement revolutionized design by removing the gap between art and architecture. In the middle of the 20th century, architects began rejecting ornamentation and began emphasizing pure form and spatial experience.And in the end of the 20th century, due to postmodernism and deconstructivism, buildings became playful, fragmented, and more expressive, blurring architecture and sculpture.
Architects As Artists:Blurring The Line Today
Some examples of today’s architects whose buildings are art in itself is , Frank Gehry, an architect who never stops attempting to be illogical and rejects to conform to the rules of symmetry, likes designing buildings that are unconventional, and unexpected and attempts to shatter people’s mundane expectations about how we see a building.
From all these it is evident that over the years architecture has evolved to be more than a shelter, it has evolved into a means to express our feelings, and it has begun to be an art in itself, All of the details of these structures as a whole make it an emotional, expressive, and poetic structure.
This transformation has led to the marriage of art and architecture as a unified whole.Architects no longer have the need to make buildings look like sculptures in a forced way, their experimentation with form, scale, light, and proportion, has made architecture a new medium of communication.
Starting from ancient buildings to modern architectural marvels the bond between art and architecture has become unified. This transformation did not just happen overnight or by just one person this happened due to the efforts of various great architects societal changes and technological advancements that paved the way for this unification, which has transformed architecture as a new medium to convey our emotions or is used as a way to store our identity, culture, and memories.
References:
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Madmuseum.org. (2025). Blurring The Lines: Between Art, Architecture, and Design. [online] Available at: https://www.madmuseum.org/events/blurring-lines-between-art-architecture-and-design [Accessed 11 May 2025].
Shivani Chougula (2024). Exploring elements of Art Nouveau Architecture. [online] Kaarwan blogs. Available at: https://www.kaarwan.com/blog/architecture/the-beauty-of-art-nouveau-architecture?id=188.
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