Concept

Architecture

Overview

Architecture is the study and practice of designing structures, especially habitable ones. It utilizes civil engineering techniques, but is considered a visual art. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing buildings or other structures. The term comes from Latin architectura; from Ancient Greek ἀρχιτέκτων (arkhitéktōn) 'architect'; from ἀρχι- (arkhi-) 'chief' and τέκτων (téktōn) 'creator'. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural symbols and as works of art. Historical civilizations are often identified with their surviving architectural achievements.

The practice of architecture itself, which began in the prehistoric era, has been used as a way of expressing culture by civilizations on all seven continents. For this reason, architecture is considered to be a form of art. Texts on architecture have been written since ancient times. The earliest surviving text on architectural theories is the 1st century BC treatise De architectura by the Roman architect Vitruvius, according to whom a good building embodies firmitas, utilitas, and venustas (durability, utility, and beauty). Centuries later, Leon Battista Alberti developed his ideas further, seeing beauty as an objective quality of buildings to be found in their proportions. In the 19th century, Louis Sullivan declared that "form follows function". "Function" began to replace the classical "utility" and was understood to include not only practical but also aesthetic, psychological, and cultural dimensions. The idea of sustainable architecture was introduced in the late 20th century.

Architecture began as rural, oral vernacular architecture that developed from trial and error to successful replication. Ancient urban architecture was preoccupied with building religious structures and buildings symbolizing the political power of rulers until Greek and Roman architecture shifted focus to civic virtues. Indian and Chinese architecture influenced forms all over Asia and Buddhist architecture in particular took diverse local flavors. During the Middle Ages, pan-European styles of Romanesque and Gothic cathedrals and abbeys emerged while the Renaissance favored Classical forms implemented by architects known by name. Later, the roles of architects and engineers became separated.

Modern architecture began after World War I as an avant-garde movement that sought to develop a completely new style appropriate for a new post-war social and economic order focused on meeting the needs of the middle and working classes. Emphasis was put on modern techniques, materials, and simplified geometric forms, paving the way for high-rise superstructures. Many architects became disillusioned with modernism which they perceived as ahistorical and anti-aesthetic, and postmodern and contemporary architecture developed. Over the years, the field of architectural construction has branched out to include everything from ship design to interior decorating.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

In the original texts

Passages from public-domain books where Architecture is discussed.

Unlike the works of the other arts, those of architecture are very seldom executed for purely æsthetic ends. These are generally subordinated to other useful ends which are foreign to art itself.
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea
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The artistic structure of architecture is not erected entirely as an object in itself, but rather as an external frame, embellishment and local habitation for something else which it subserves. A building is not complete until it has received the statue of the god or the society of human beings who make their dwelling therein.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 1
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For instance, one might take the sensuous medium. Thus architecture is treated as crystallization; sculpture, as the organic modelling of the material in its sensuous and spatial totality; painting, as the coloured surface and line; while in music, space, as such, passes into the point of time possessed of content within itself, until finally the external medium is in poetry depressed into complete insignificance…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Introduction to Hegel's Philosophy of Fine Arts Translated from the German with Notes and Prefatory Essay
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Diderot and D’Alembert, therefore, in their _Arbor scienciæ_, have placed military architecture in the department of elementary geometry. Naval architecture teaches the best form and construction of vessels; for which best form it has recourse to the question of the solid of least resistance; a problem of transcendental geometry. And its appurtenant projectiles belong to the same branch as in the preceding case.
Thomas Jefferson, Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies, From the Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 4
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And when we have perfected the classification of things, we shall give them names, and see whether, as in the case of letters, there are any classes to which they may be all referred (cf. Phaedrus); and hence we shall see their natures, and see, too, whether they have in them classes as there are in the letters; and when we have well considered all this, we shall know how to apply them to what they resemble—whether…
Plato, Cratylus
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Architecture

Overview

In the original texts

Philosophers who discussed Architecture

Related ideas

Opposing perspectives

Place in the tradition