Many of you would not disagree with the statement that Architecture is combination of Art and Science. If Frank Lloyd Wright proclaimed Architecture as the “Mother of all Arts”, then why not the “Mother of all Sciences”? Why has the mother embraced one child and forsaken the other?
The Oxford English dictionary defines Art as:
“The expression or
application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form
such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for
their beauty or emotional power.”
The Oxford English Dictionary defines Science as:
“The intellectual and
practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and
behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and
experiment.”
Art in its pure form appeals to our sense of the ideal and
our highest aspirations, experienced through passion and instinct. Whereas Science
in its pure form tries to understand nature and the environment by logical and
analytical reasoning. Does the presence of passion and instinct denote the absence
of reason, and vice versa?
The Architect is not an artist since s/he is not working in
the realm of the purity of the arts, and the Architect is not a scientist since
s/he is not producing works based purely on deductive and inductive reason
alone. The Architect has to include the richness and clutter of the real world,
not just the perfection of the artist’s and scientist’s realm. In that sense Architecture is really an
impure art and an inexact science.
Comments
All professions, including Architecture are indeed a combination of art and science, my thesis being that Art and Science being the pure ends of the spectrum, all applications are somewhere in the middle range of the spectrum, with varying degrees of each.