Out of Love: Inviting Plastik into Architecture

Abstract

The question of form in architecture remains a delicate and contested issue. Formal expression is frequently criticized for privileging visual display over architecture’s disciplinary commitments. Contemporary discourse often responds by promoting the tactile and the atmospheric as alternatives to optical dominance. Yet our engagement with most buildings remains primarily visual. This essay therefore first distills a suggestion from J. G. Herder’s Plastik on our perceptual relation to form and then mobilizes it toward a nuanced reappraisal of form at the scale of building.