ANOTHER VIEW ON ART

Architecture is art and it cannot help but be anything but. These are the thoughts of Gieselmann and Ungers in their writing published in 1963. In these pages, we have been debating whether architecture is art, whether architects are artists, and the place of technology in the mix.

In their words,

“Architecture is partial creation. But every creative process is art. It is entitled to the highest spiritual status. Technology is the application of knowledge and experience. Technology and construction are aids to execution. Technology is not art.”

So in their view, architecture requires technology. Yet technology is not art. Only architecture is art. Therefore architecture, because of its dependency on technology, is only a partially creative endeavor. Maybe that accurately summarizes the dichotomy between technology and art, maybe it doesn’t.

They go on to posit architectural design as a direct challenge and reaction to the cultural milIeu which it springs from. “Creative art is unthinkable without a spiritual clash with tradition.” In their view, architecture is art. And it can only be good if it clashes with the surrounding culture. So far, so good.

But here is their ringing, iconoclastic statements concerning architectural design. Note as you read this their inclusion of the terms 2D, multi-dimension, integrate, etc.

“Architecture is a vital penetration of a multi-layered, mysterious, evolved and structured reality.” “Again and again it demands recognition of the genius loci out of which it grows. Architecture is no longer a two-dimensional impression but is becoming experience of corporeal and spatial reality achieved by walking around and entering into.” “The essential viewpoint is from the inside, not from outside. The subject-object relationship has been done away with.”

In a few sentences they cut right to the chase. They question the subjective viewer location. They support interior form making, rather than exterior form making. They discard two dimensional representation without thinking twice.