the truth of architecture as a process
In the search for truth, the simple criterion of aesthetics is insufficient. This can be demonstrated by a piece of music that lacks standard meter and melody, and is dominated by dissonances and strange noises made in an unconventional way from the instrument case. This is difficult music to listen to, but extremely elaborate in composition - poignant, carrying a load of intense emotions. Its score can be a separate masterpiece of graphic design. It is up to the genius of the creator to create a piece that is difficult and universal, or merely enjoyable for the average viewer. Interestingly, a refuge in the reception of often difficult and incomprehensible contemporary music can sometimes be architecture. A good example of this is the European Krzysztof Penderecki Music Center in Luslawice16 - full of rhythms, sophisticated elegance and the smell of freshly cut larch wood and fields of grain stretching all around. It is a place for anyone who feels like listening to a concert here. As you can see, architecture, unlike art, is egalitarian, so it has a greater responsibility to convey the truth.
Danish architect, urban planner and poet Steen Eiler Rasmussen compared the work of an architect to that of a gardener who selects and juxtaposes the right plant species. It turns out that even the most beautiful garden can become a failure if plants are not selected and planted according to their nature. This is because they will not develop healthily in an unfavorable environment. The author of "Feeling Architecture" also compares an architect to a theater director, who, struggling in the creative process with many technical and human difficulties, has the task of enabling the sophisticated viewer to experience art at the highest level17. An architect is a sculptor - he works with form and solid; he is also a painter, because he uses color. With the caveat, however, that his art is utilitarian. An architect, like a sculptor, painter, gardener, director or actor, is in search of truth, which can be externalized only in its realization. Architecture today is less and less an object of expression by a single artist, as it used to be. There is often a fallacy of architecture when there is no compromise between the architect and the builder, investor, contractor or user, and when it is difficult to combine their conflicting interests into one integrated system. The architect's ideas and visions are transformed in the course of design work, leaving the architect with a sense of powerlessness and falling into internal contradiction. The visual results of the failed compromise are the illegibility and ambiguity of architecture.
The truth of architecture is an expression of internal and external harmony. Architecture that not only fits the context, but also complements the space, creates additional value. And it is not a matter of complementing the spatial composition only by faithfully imitating the existing morphology of the structure. The composition of an arrangement of architectural forms can be compared to a group of instrumentalists creating a piece of music during joint sessions. Each of them brings his individual sound to it and so a polyphonic harmony is created. What can reveal the truth of an architectural work is the search for harmonious form achieved by balancing individual relationships. The true character of architecture is revealed in the process by which it is created, it does not create an individual work, in fact, most often it remains in the background. The modern architect must therefore be a skilled organizer18. To tell the truth is to bear witness to the content of our convictions about it. We are not responsible for the truth, but we are responsible for the way we communicate it19.
Expansion of the Serpentine Sackler Gallery in London, design: Zaha Hadid.
Photo: Anna Martyka
truth architecture as narrative
A fundamental element of culture is the ability to use signs, especially verbal signs. Language is the most important sign system, but not the only one. Architecture as a system of signs also serves communication. Swiss-born British philosopher Alain de Botton argues that houses speak.
The concept of houses that speak allows us to put at the heart of the architectural puzzle the question of what values we want to live by - not just what we think objects should look like , he writes20.
And just as in linguistic communication, what is important here is not the truth itself, but the speaking of the truth21. The basic premise of the concept of truth in architecture is the recognition that absolute truth does not exist. If we want, we can sharpen a slice of this truth, articulate it. With some help here comes Finnish architect and architectural theorist Juhani Pallasmaa, who created his own story about architecture. He made the discovery that, in fact, architecture is the result of human hands, and he didn't just mean the building process. He coined the term "thinking hand" to refer to the hands of the architect, who creates his works primarily with his hands. The hands facilitate his thinking, but they are also crucial for communication. The hand takes the initiative in the search for a vision so that the designer's idea eventually materializes in the form of architecture. The truth of architecture arises from the understanding hand of the architect, in the painstaking process of design. Interestingly, Pallasmaa calls for a change in the entire education system in a world increasingly dominated by a fictional digital environment that disregards the real senses of man22.
What is happening here is similar to what happens in literature - the narrative does not necessarily have to be chronological, exhausting all possible threads to be grasped. German perceptual psychologist Rudolf Arnheim, for example, in his book "Dynamics of Architectural Form," focuses only on the visual expression of architecture, comparing it with other visual arts and music. He wonders what influences its evaluation and what judgments it generates. He seeks answers to the questions:
Does a building externalize the visual unity that makes it comprehensible to the human eye? Does its appearance reflect the various functions, both physical and psychological, for which it was designed? (...) Does it represent a manifestation of the best of human intelligence and imagination?23
The author answers all these questions in a literary manner, guiding the reader through the meanderings of architecture and space. However, it is not only the engaging narrative that is noteworthy here, but especially the many visual aspects of architecture that could serve as criteria for the search for the truth of architecture: expression and function, internal and external relations, mobility and order, or symbols expressed by the dynamics of form. The author singles out certain aspects of objects to distinguish successful buildings from unsuccessful ones, and points to specific features of architecture on the basis of which its acceptance or rejection occurs. His thoughts could be taken as a basis for considering the truth and falsity of architecture.
Let's examine some of the issues raised by Arnheim, using them to search for the truth of architecture. These include elements of the natural environment, such as rocks, water, clouds, plants and animals. They are components of nature whose visual image informs us of their functions. Intuitively, we know that this is a manifestation of truth. The ability available to some species to change their coat color as a tool of protection from predators and a means of survival can be interpreted as a lie24.
Architecture, on the other hand, is supposed to suggest how to use it, and this is its fundamental truth. It is supposed to show where the main entrance to a building is and how to orient oneself inside. We can deliberately hide the shaft with elevators in the lobby so that most users use the stairs, but at the same time we must not stigmatize people in wheelchairs - vertical communication should be easily accessible to them. Landmarks located in appropriate places make it easier to use the building. In a well-designed building there is a structural relationship between aesthetic and functional properties. The logic of a building should be clear, not cluttered, both at the level of the entire structure and at the level of the details25. Arnheim also argues that it is a necessity for architecture to maintain a certain order and balance. Any complex organism, including architecture as such26, like the human organism, contains sophisticated, specialized subsystems, but in order for each to function properly, it must be managed by a central command system. In architecture, this problem requires a constant search for solutions and compromises in relationships at different levels of the process - first at the design process stage, then during construction, and ultimately also at the building's use stage. Architecture synergistically combines systems from different areas of human activity, and the whole must be compatible with legal, economic, organizational, psychological, social and cultural, and sometimes even metaphysical considerations.
