Architecture’s Approximate Beauty

Abstract

Contested in this study is the assumption that beauty in
architecture has a simple and single definition. Not one, but three kinds
of beauty are introduced and distinguished. They are not ranked, despite
the long history of one or another being given superior standing. The
three, the built work’s beauty, that of its many and varied representa
tions (drawings, models, simulations), and that of its motivating idea are
shown to both complement and conflict with one another in judgments
about quality. Both spatial and temporal dimensions of architectural or
der come into the question, as do the composition and operation of a
building’s parts or elements—what appears and what occurs in a work
of architecture. Against the tendency to link concepts of beauty with no
tions of order and permanence, attention is given to the concrete condi
tions of projects which are always imperfect and continually changing.
This focus, in turn, leads to recognition of the importance of notions of
disproportionality, fragmentation, and decay. Projects plus writings in
and outside architecture from antiquity to the present are adduced to
argue for the reality of approximation in architectural beauty