Beauty as Outcome of Reason and Emotion in Architecture

Abstract

Our capacity to think affords us to be conscious of what
we experience, learn, remember and judge. The results are understand
ing caused by reason and emotion, the latter being reaction to the for
mer. In turn, remembered emotion may be the cause for seeking addi
tional understanding. This dual aspect relates to the processes in which
beauty, defined in this essay as positive aesthetic feeling, plays a role in
the perception and development of architecture. Sensation and instinct
are addressed in search of how they influence our understanding beyond
knowledge toward meaning through creativity and judgment. Before we
get to that, however, it is necessary to look at the very foundation from
which experience and thinking evolves. It is what we call reality, defined
here in short, as form-matter unity. Built examples are analyzed regard
ing properties which let feelings of beauty arise.