IS ARCHITECTURE ART?

In these pages, we have stated that we are not creating art in our drawings.  And because we are not creating art, then we must not be artists.  So if the drawings that we create are not art, then are the enclosures that result from the drawings art?

The Viennese painter Hunderwasser did not think so.  Writing in 1958 in his Mould Manifesto, he states that the crucial factor is personal expression.  “Everyone should be able to build, and so long as this freedom to build does not exist, the planned architecture of today cannot be considered an art at all.”  “No inhibition should be placed upon the individual’s desire to build.”

And then as the most damning statement, “What are put into execution are merely wretched compromises standing in isolation and created by people with a bad conscience whose minds are dominated by the foot-rule!”

Another premise of these pages is that there is no bad drawing.  There are just drawings that do very little work, or there are drawings that are overly formulaic, or there are drawings that are just a pretty picture.

So if there are no bad drawings, can there be no bad buildings?  If a building performs, and resolves, and works very hard, then is not that the correct judgmental criteria?  Or to put it another way, will a building that works hard spring from drawings that do lots of work.

Of course, a building does not magically spring from a watercolor sketch.  The road from the sketch to the building is convoluted.  Nevertheless, the first sketches in a building process are extremely important.  Those first exploratory drawings should not be taken for granted.  As we have seen, how we sketch impacts how we think.  So, yes, the building will be in fact better.  The building has to be better.   The whole point is to make better buildings.   And whether you call it art or not is entirely up to you.