Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Beauty as the manifestation of aesthetic responses and valuations is a human universal. All societies operate with (a version of) the category of beauty. We all navigate the world aesthetically. Architecture and the design disciplines together shape the outward appearance of the social world. Therefore, beauty as the engaged response to appearances should be an indispensable category of all design discourses, including architectural discourse. However, beauty is an increasingly embattled and by now nearly extinct category within a conscientious architectural discourse that is rightly aspiring to rational accountability and evidence-based propositions. Beauty has been eliminated from the discipline’s discourse because it is seen as subjective and irrational, as an irresponsible diversion or distraction from architecture’s societal tasks. However, beauty is clearly not being abandoned by the end-users of design. Nor are aesthetic choices absent from actual contemporary design practice. Beauty is just no longer being explicitly referred to.
Source: Architectural Intelligence
Author: Patrik Schumacher
Institution: Tongji University
Language: English
Subfield: Architecture
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4404117739