We need to look back into history to understand and experience the divinity in the relationship between man, materials, and space. Conversation between material, form and space is the music of architecture. This conversation is responsible for setting the parameters of aesthetics in architecture. The ‘intent’ of the project is the only tangible aspect to be assessed in terms of success and failure in view of how well it has been achieved at the end of the process called design. The rest is absolutely ‘intangible’ for a designer to work with and others to experience.
As architects, we need to look at material with greater respect and be more sensitive and responsible while dealing with it.
When we talk of material, we generally think of it as something physical, occupying space, dumb and deaf, but in terms of architecture it doesn’t remain like that; it rises above its physical properties to take part in the divine conversation to happen. This really defines the criteria. As architects, we need to look at material with greater sense of respect and importance, and we need to be more sensitive and responsible while dealing with it. Glass and steel are the materials of substance and the outcome of great technological innovations, and are responsible for greater innovations in the field.
Anand Engineering College, JaipurI think it is a mistake to look at material in terms of finding ‘trends’ because trends are governed by market forces and needs.
Let’s understand that technology takes a linear path, but it has to take a full circle to come back to the same point. I think we will be committing a mistake if we look at the material in terms of finding ‘trends’ because trends are governed by market forces and needs. We have to go a long way in order to acquire an onlooker’s vision to visualize the curve of apparent linear movement making a perfect circular path reaching back to where it started.
Market needs to be integrated with the process in order to gain a sensitivity and sensibility towards everything related to human and human society. We as designers need to clearly understand that ‘aesthetics’ is not the prime objective of the whole process, because the term has to be redefined every time with each individual process as a rule. It is the natural outcome of the divine relationship we are talking about.
Participation of material in the design process through the soul can really create the music of architecture.
Aesthetics in architecture, and in any other form of art, should be a holistic, intangible experience where nothing is experienced in isolation - neither, form or space, nor the material. It should be like a ‘fragrance’ at the end of the process, to be experienced. Once we are able to understand the relationship we are talking about as a designer, it would be easy and natural for the material to participate in the process. Participation of material in the design process through the soul can really create the music of architecture. I think timelessness in any art form comes when this experience of aesthetics goes beyond the human senses and explanations of the mind.
