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Architecture - An Impure Art, an Inexact Science



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

Unknown said…
I find this topic insignificant. Architecture is not an art or science. Architecture is architecture. That's why there is a word "architecture" and that does not equate to the words "art" or "science" nor have the same meaning.
06:39
Samir Shaikh said…
Kiki, your comment is accepted in good faith. This blog was an attempt at deconstruction of the thought and rhetoric in nature in some ways. The idea was to deconstruct into separate parts a commonly held notion and try to construct a new argument from those parts.

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.
13:05
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