HONESTY, TRUE BEAUTY of Architecture
“Never to receive anything as true which I did not clearly know to be so.” Quoted by Eugene-Emmanuel Viollet-Le-Duc.
Classic and modern, simplicity and complexity, honesty and deception, which will be the best to represent the architecture nowadays. There is no true or false in applying this elements in the buildings. However, honesty and deception can be very subjective in modern architecture. The knowledge of true means honesty in architecture? Façade cladding means deception in architecture? Is honest material and structural still can be seen in architecture today?
“The more our buildings are loaded with details, and the richer they are through the variety of their constituent elements, the more do they betray forgetfulness of great principles and the absence of ideas in the artists who contribute to their erection.”
Architecture today is towards technology, economic and cultural environment. All the material we can obtain easy through mass production from factory, the revolution in construction technology and the requirement of green building had limit honesty in architecture. On the contrary, deception in architecture is widely used in building design and structural. All the elements should be used to show their own characteristic, if a material is used as decoration or it was cladded for the sake of art, it will be consider as deception. To be true in respect of the material is to fulfill exactly its properties and make it an outstanding elements among others. What are regarded as questions purely belonging to art, symmetry and external form are only secondary conditions as compared with those dominant principles.
“The arts are diseased, architecture is dying in the midst of prosperity, notwithstanding the presence of energetic vital principles, it is dying of excesses and a debilitating régime.”
Honesty in architecture should be remain and widely apply to all buildings. In modern architecture, most of the designer try to hide the structural with finishes, cladding and even an imitated material. The variety options of material have cause the designer to focus on façade as priority instead of choosing it based on property and the function of the building. At the end, the building is just a form of art for display purpose without any soul and identity. In my opinion, a building that respect the material still can be attractive even after century. For instance, the mud brick structure at Siwa Oasis, Egypt. This magnificent structure maximize the properties of its material and its constructive processes had been used as reference for modern building.
We are no longer run the risk of getting into that confusion of styles, methods and form. Considers if possible to compose a new architecture by selecting from all of the one has appeared to be good, this is a dangerous error. We shall start to discover an architecture that appropriate to our age, or at least we shall prepare the way for those who follow us, for an art is not made in a day. Deception in architecture will only be the stepping stone instead we should employ the materials according to their qualities and properties, respect honest in architecture.
In my perspectives, we should discuss on “Honesty, True Beauty of Architecture”. For in architecture, truth is not sufficient for an excellent design. We may end up produce what is ugly. However, the effort we put will result in the success in material and structural. On the contrary, deception will be as perfect as seen, it cannot last long as it is just a platform to express the art of architecture. True beauty has never been attainable without the concurrence of those invariable laws which are based on reason. To every work that is absolutely beautiful there will be always found to correspond a principle rigorously logical.
