Opus Project: Five Citations:History and Theory

What is architecture: Definitions

A mute, utilitarian container? The crystallization of ideas? A shelter in the form of art. According to Ralph Waldo Emerson "A blossoming in stone and a flowering of geometry. According to "Goethe" "Frozen Music" " Human triumph over gravitation and the will to power" Nietzsche. "The will of an epoch translated into space" Architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe." The Magnificent play of forms in light."Architect Le Corbusier...A cultural instrument- according to Louis I Kahn. "Inhabited sculpture" Constantin Brancusi.and Ada Louise Huxtable "Architecture is balance of structural science and aesthetic expression for the satisfaction of needs that go far beyond utilitarian. Louis I. Kahn, "architecture is what nature cannot make."

I agree with nearly all of the above except for the statement of Louis I. Kahn because without nature, plants, soil, trees, stones, sunlight, the earth itself we would have no architecture and most designs were taken from nature. The golden angle for creating perfect measurements in creating forms or structures is taken straight from nature.(the sunflower seed). Without the resources from the earth the peoples of the earth would not have been able to construct anything.

" Architecture is the chambers nautilus shell of the human species: it is the environment we build for ourselves, and which as we grow in experience and knowledge, we change and adapt to our expanded condition. If we wish to understand ourselves, we must take care not to eliminate the"shell" of our past

for it is the physical record of our aspirations and achievements"

(Understanding Architecture It's elements, History, and Meaning. Leland M. Roth p3)