When William Shakespeare quoted ‘Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, it was a brilliant way of saying to the audience, ‘if you could not see the beauty in my plays, it is simply because you weren’t capable of comprehending it. Needless to say, this quote holds weight in the design community, because truly, art and design are subjective. Add in ‘The eyes see, what the mind knows, and design suddenly becomes an encrypted language that’s viewed, heard, and sensed uniquely through every individual’s perspective.
Architecture is a demanding and exhaustive profession (that’s what one hears before entering college), and going through it only reaffirmed it, like a blow from a sledgehammer. Along that course, one can start questioning their finitely depleting brain cells, ‘Is the struggle worth it?’. Humans can still manage to survive in caves or boxes of timber and go along living their merry lives. They managed it centuries ago, so why not now? Tick off the basic needs, make four walls, and the End.
But being creatures of habit, they had gone around and experimented, created more than needed, and now, from caves, and castles to skyscrapers, architecture stands to be the biggest marvel that mankind still produces. This marvel, further becomes the identity, pride, inspiration, and part of human culture. It has become so deeply rooted in people’s lives, that it is almost a subconscious default setting, that impacts one silently, plays with one’s senses, sparks emotions, churns some wheels in the brain, and revives memories that stimulate the same sentiments. All this can be experienced as simply as a walk through space.
When William Shakespeare’s company (The Lord Chamberlain’s Men) were forced out of the Globe Theatre in 1598, instead of quitting and inherently possibly reducing Shakespeare’s fame and almost obliterating their existence on current library shelves, they decided to do something simple. Dismantle the whole theatre, carry it across the Thames, and build it all over again. One must understand that The Globe wasn’t the only theatre, three other theatres played Shakespeare’s plays. Yet, not one could be omitted, for each held value and sentiments for the art and the artists. Furthermore, the Globe could be deemed unfortunate for it was destroyed another three times and finally reconstructed in 1997, a street away from the previous plot. All this spanned between 1598 – 1997, and yet the Globe survives. Was it necessary to rebuild the same structure five times? Yet today, it has become a hub where people visit to view the plays, evoke those emotions, and feel the drama, not just through the event that transcribes, but also through the space, just in the same manner that people did during that era.
When architecture can subconsciously move a human mind to relive a past incident, what happens when it dictates the human mind to feel negative? Just as much moving and ethereal architecture can make one experience, so can it imbibe feelings of despair, fear, and submission. Fortunately, architecture is human-centric, and most humans wouldn’t willingly live in a haunted version of Disneyland. To a certain degree, the Parliament structures exude authority and power, not to oppress their nation, but to impress other countries with their might, which wouldn’t require shouting a speech through the microphone to emphasize this. Nonetheless, it’s a fine line between exuding just the right amount of authority or saying ‘I will never go back there again!’, and if it plays either of these roles, it will play them with excellence, enough to give a good shiver down the spine.
Despite the balance the architecture has maintained between the various genres and styles that are represented, currently there may be a phenomenon that leaves behind core essentials and fundamentals of deriving the identity of the built. Technology has brought ease to an Architects’ fingers from constant drafting and cutting, but it also placed our fingers on new instrumnets called social media. When used correctly, Social media is a tool that widens the reach of knowledge, until it is just received as information to copy-paste simply because it’s unique and it could garner some Instagram likes, the knowledge dissipates in the process. It should be stuck with a hot glue gun, that people do get attracted to ‘Aesthetic Vibes’, it’s part of the job, but what happens after that? Trendy for sure, but what happens when the next trend comes? Does it hold any value anymore? Would another architect have to intervene, renovate it, and add new value to it?
Architecture is one of the many products that mankind delivers in its lifetime. They are time stamps of our existence, a representation and celebration of what humankind was, during 2022 or whichever year this article is being read. Humans could continue living in boxes, wear a black t-shirt and black jeans, have no new model phones coming out every year, and have no idea of cuisine to salivate over; but how does that make us Humans? How does that make us distinct from the remaining 7.8 billion humans? So when it has this superpower, why reduce it down to just trends, fads, and blank walls? Be willing to see in all of its glory. Be willing to see in all its potential.
References:
Shakespeare Birthplace Trust (2022) Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. [online]. Available at: https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/shakespedia/shakespeares-globe-theatre/ (Accessed: November 3, 2022).
