Look up and around if you’ve ever been puzzled about why architecture ultimately matters. Right now, it’s most likely everywhere around you. Design and architecture can create an impact on people- feelings, thoughts and overall well-being. The elegance of architecture is that it can make a great impact and attract people in different categories- usage of a particular item, how a specific space might affect us, the impact of a building when we enter and spend time in it, how we love or dislike a city. When one thinks back on the time before they had a firm grasp of architecture, they merely recollect moving around being in the places without knowing the worth or significance of the constructed world around them.
“We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us.”- Winston Churchill.
Architecture, unlike other creative and artistic fields, must always represent the time and culture in which it was created. It takes time, money, and teamwork to design, which creates architecture. It never takes place in a vacuum, and there can never be just one author. To design their projects, architects collaborate with dozens, if not hundreds, of people, and a better and more interesting set of values is conveyed down this chain, ones that shape how individuals perceive and experience each other, as well as how societies see and feel themselves and their environment.
From Home to Public spaces
Architecture serves as a stage set and framework for our existence, in addition to providing shelter. It’s why we feel energized on an 80-story building’s roof deck, interconnected and flourishing in a buzzing public square, and humbled in a majestic church. Communities emerge from and are shaped by the architecture, taking on the qualities of the structures that house them. People who practice architecture may be both detail-oriented technologists (trying to solve equations that push structures further into the sky, or preserving every available electron of power pushed into its walls) and artists of space and form.
“The holy grail in urban design is to produce some kind of novelty or change every few seconds; otherwise, we become cognitively disengaged.”-Eller.
Learning about it improves how architecture is recognized even the most mundane settings may become profound enabling a cognitive change in thinking. Moreover, the rapid spread of COVID-19 had already influenced several more in the architecture realm to rethink their work and what it would perhaps mean to design for a community that will never be the same, particularly when it relates to how people gather in and use massive public spaces such as hotels, transportation hubs, airports, healthcare facilities, gyms and offices.
Adaptability and Dynamic transformation since ages!
With these new perspectives, we begin to pay attention to minor things while thoroughly inspecting the environment. We discuss beliefs and thoughts to construct additional venues. We also find ourselves pondering how it may be enhanced more or looking for flaws and improvements to be made, essentially evaluating the place. When you read about ancient societies, the very first thing people look into is their architecture, because it is so indicative of who they were.
Let us consider ancient Egypt as an example. Take a glance at the pyramids or the Sphinx to get a sense of how the Egyptians felt about their rulers, religion, and the region from which they derived their building materials. Gothic architecture, which arose in Europe during the Middle Ages and was a perfect contrast to its era of devotion bordering on the dread of God, was indeed a brilliant contrast to its era of reverence bordering on the concern of divinity, amidst a period of gloomy instability.
Industrialization, which reorganized the world according to logical machine production norms, eventually gave rise to Modernism, which replicated this new order in cities using mass-produced steel and glass. All revolutions, particularly political ones, instantly turn to architecture to produce their most visible monuments. Whether a structure is an ornate display or a minimal mainstay, architecture has the potential to explain its age.
Influence on culture and social aspects!
Spend some time thinking about how architecture influences culture, and you’ll realize that it’s less of a career and much more of a worldview, a prism through which you may interpret everything around you. As a result, it lends itself to a wide range of visually creative arts that need spatial conceptualization—graphic design, video production, cinema, and so on.
Because architecture is fundamentally public, it is similar to anthropology and psychology in that it provides a platform for social behaviors and internal emotions. Who is encouraged and who is discouraged from entering a place or community? In a particular situation, how are individuals made to feel? What distinguishes a library from a prison? Is it even necessary? The form and purpose of public spaces.!
There’s a body of knowledge inside architecture that’s apart from the practical problems of construction, and it’s entirely speculative, avant-garde, and fundamentally critical of the way things work, and defining it exclusively in the context of other professions performs it a disservice. Instead of treating the constructed world as a collection of fixed and unbreakable traditions, careful examination exposes how architecture is a completely synthetic, human product. It can take almost any shape we want.
Patterns we find all around (such as the peaked rooftop of a home or the stately columns of a historic bank) don’t come from a fixed understanding of how things must look, although their repetition appears to imply ultimate unanimity. They’re the product of distinctive assemblages of cultural values, accessible resources, economy, geographical location and climate. Because almost all of these aspects are changeable, architecture grows at a slower pace than other artistic disciplines. Each time architecture gives a criticism that recommends fresh methods to survive, work, or engage, it becomes a world-building marvel that is difficult to separate from science fiction.
Providing solutions for global issues!
Considering that structures and the constructed environment are indeed the single greatest generator of carbon emissions causing catastrophic climate change, this is swiftly shifting from a privilege to a necessity. Global warming is a design issue, and the certain green building ideologies that aim to address it, would require millions of architects to help. This will include both growing construction of structures that need almost no fossil fuels to operate, as well as coping with the already mounting consequences of not doing so in the past, such as constantly flooded coastal communities and storms.
And, on a cultural level, the political and socioeconomic mechanisms necessary to implement these revolutionary improvements will necessitate new architecture; yet another revolutionary to be documented in architectural form. Architecture is intrinsically futuristic, and architects are taught to imagine a world not how it is, but as it may be.
References:
- Bond, M. (2017, June 6). The hidden ways that architecture affects how you feel. Retrieved from BBC: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170605-the-psychology-behind-your-citys-design
- Chayka, K. (2020, June 17). How coronavirus will reshape architecture? Retrieved from The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/dept-of-design/how-the-coronavirus-will-reshape-architecture
- Hanging gardens of one central park. (n.d.). Retrieved from Wikipedia: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Hanging_gardens_of_One_Central_Park%2C_Sydney.jpg
- Spence, C. (2020). Senses of place: architectural design for the multisensory mind. . Cogn. Research 5, 46 .
- Washington square park. (n.d.). Retrieved from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Square_Park
