Understanding architecture in 10 simple metaphors
What distinguishes a bike room from an architectural masterpiece?, ask Andrea Simitch and Val Warke, authors of the book The language of architecture, The 26 key concepts (Dunod). Indeed, isn't every construction necessarily a landmark in architecture, since it has a function? For the two authors, emeritus professors, “architecture is defined by the aesthetic project that implies it (…) Perhaps we could say that architecture, just like poetic language, is endowed with a certain ‘thickness’”.
Defining the language of architecture is thus particularly complex, as Andrea Simitch and Val Warke warn, who see the pitfall of reducing concepts to “simple decoding exercises”. They therefore wanted their work not to be an exhaustive lexicon of architectural ideas, but rather an introduction to the fundamentals of the discipline: physical elements such as structure, materials, but also more immaterial ones such as light and movement. Using clever metaphors, the book helps to better understand architecture. Among the 26 key concepts of the book, we have retained ten most evocative, while keeping in mind the inexhaustiveness of this selection.
1. The concept: the project guide
“Rooted in simple abstractions, the concept is nevertheless the starting point of a process which generally results in a complex project. » Thus the authors compare architectural design to a journey, the concept of which indicates the destination, providing the oars and the rudder to the architect. More than a solution, it is an itinerary that guides the project, evolving as it progresses.
For Simmons Hall, the MIT university residence in Cambridge (2002), Steven Holl used the concept of a sponge to design this building with a porous and protean appearance.
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2. The context: the relationship with the outside world
A building never exists alone, but is always anchored in a context, with which it maintains all types of relationship: “platonic, fortuitous, symbiotic or harmful”. The dialogue between the work and its context depends on the interpretation that we want to give to it, the context being able to both give meaning to the construction or, on the contrary, make it lose meaning. Another key concept of the work, the environment, linked to the context, supposes a subtle balance between exploitation and enhancement of it.
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