ARCHITECTURE

Summary of the Book: What is architecture? An Essay on Landscapes, Buildings, and Machines



Summary of the Book: What is architecture? An Essay on Landscapes, Buildings, and Machines

Introduction about the book

Though, the title seems like that the book will provide insights regarding architectures, and provide the key knowledge regarding architecture and building famous landmarks. However, the book is more literary criticism of that argues the limitations of the architectures. A common notion that architecture is expanded from philosophy to science has been denied in this book by Paul Shepheard (Shepheard 1994, pp. 3-126). Paul Shepheard in this book described various aspects of landscapes, buildings and machines in a novelistic way, by describing how people counter their greatest fear for the sake of innovation.

Book's content and writing style

Under the heading “three expeditions in search of architecture,” the author had attempted to describe the architecture in an ironic way. He argues that architecture is not everything. However, architecture, sites, and spaces are integral concepts to constructions of identity and identification. They are active, powerful, and pervasive, yet often their effect is not noticed on a conscious level but preferably is one of subconscious perception, and it is this very effect that renders these elements so effective (Shepheard 1994, pp. 3-126). A simplified example suffices. Anyone who has seen the television series law and order or who has lived in a leading metropolitan American city has been repeatedly exposed to the neoclassical architecture of a court building. Although one may not consciously read these buildings, their identities are clear and present, acting upon the American cultural psyche. Monolithic columns, symmetrical expanses of space and architecture, an imposing triangular pediment: These are the structures of power and authority, where one comes to judge and be judged, symbols of the strength of the city and the American justice system (Horgen, Joroff, Porter, and Schon, 1999, pp.100-125). We recognize this effect often without realizing the how or the why, or even that it happens.

Built structures, empty spaces, and sites in which they interact both reflect and create individual and collective identities, existing in a potent nexus of community, patron, designer, and social mores and dynamics of power (Kornberger and Clegg 2004, pp. 1095-1114). It is no surprise that many significant modern and recent figures have occupied themselves with issues of space and place, of architecture and structures.

One of the primary issues of the built environment is that the power and the pervasiveness of the effect of these structures and spaces, of identity that they communicate, can lead to the impression that these sites are natural as opposed to historical, constructed, and designed (McHarg 1995, pp.88-96). Consider for instance the Arch of Constantine constructed in Rome by Emperor Constantine in 312-315 CE to commemorate his victory over Maxentius. The triumphant arch form in and of itself is a potent example of structure and space (Shepheard 1994, pp. 3-126). It is a monumental sign of victory and power, on which the deeds and valor are depicted and inscribed ...