Form (architecture)

In architecture, form refers to a combination of external appearance, internal structure, and the unity of the design as a whole, an order created by the architect using space and mass.

External appearance

Irregular shapes at the Berliner Philharmonie

The external outline of a building includes its shape, size, color, and texture), as well as relational properties, like position, orientation, and visual inertia (appearance of concentration and stability).

Architects are primarily concerned with the shapes of the building itself (contours, silhouettes), its openings (doors and windows), and enclosing planes (floor, walls, ceiling).

Forms can have regular shape (stable, usually with an axis or plane of symmetry, like a triangle or pyramid), or irregular; the latter can sometimes be constructed by combining multiple forms (additive forms, composition) or removing one form from another (subtractive forms).

Multiple forms can be organized in different ways:

• in a line or along a circle;
• as a regular grid;
• as an irregular cluster;
• in a star-like radial pattern.

Theories

Multiple theories were suggested to explain the origination of forms. Gelernter considers them to be variations of five basic ideas:

1. A form is defined by its function ("form follows function"). For building to be "good", it should fulfill the functional requirements imposed by external physical, social, and symbolic needs (for example, a theater should have unobstructed view of the stage from the spectators' seats). Each set of functions corresponds to an ideal form (that can be latent and still waiting for a thoughtful architect to find it);
2. A form is a product of the designer's creativity. An architect's intuition suggests a new form that eventually blossoms, this explains similarities between the buildings with disparate functions built by the same architect;
3. A form is dictated by the prevailing set of attitudes shared by the society, the Zeitgeist ("Spirit of Age"). While expressing his individuality, an architect still unconsciously reflects the artistic tastes and values that are "in the air" at the time;
4. A form is defined by the socioeconomic factors. Unlike the Spirit of Age theory, the externalities are more physical (e.g., methods of production and distribution). Architect live in a society and their works are influenced by the prevailing ideology (for example, Versailles represents societal hierarchy while Prairie buildings);
5. Architecture forms are timeless, the good ones cross the geographical, cultural, and temporal borders. For hundreds of years, these beliefs were embodied in "The Five Orders of Architecture". According to the theory of types, there are only few basic building forms, like basilica or atrium, with each generating multiple versions with stylistic differences (basilica form can be traced in Roman court buildings, Romanesque and Gothic churches, all the way to the 20th century Environmental Education Center in the Liberty State Park, New Jersey).

Early theories of form

As the nomadic cultures began to settle and desired to provide homes for their deities as well, they faced a fundamental challenge: "how would mortals ... know the kind of built environment that would please the gods?" The first answer was obvious: claim the divine origin of the architectural form, passed to architects by kings and priests. Architects, not having an access to the original source, worked out the ways to scale buildings while keeping the order through the use of symmetry, multiples and fractions of the basic module, proportions.

Plato discussed the ideal forms, "Platonic solids": cube, tetrahedron, octahedron, icosahedron). Per Plato, these timeless Forms can be seen by the soul in the objects of the material world; architects of latter times turned these shapes into more suitable for construction sphere, cylinder, cone, and square pyramid. The contemporaneous Greek architects, however, still assumed the divine origins of the forms of their buildings. Standard temple types with predetermined number and location of columns eventually evolved into the orders, but Greeks thought of these not as frozen in time results of the cultural evolution, but as timeless divine truths captured by mortals.

Vitruvius, in the only surviving classical antiquity treatise on the subject of architecture (c. 25 BC), acknowledges the evolutionary origination of forms by referring to the first shelters built by the primitive men, who were emulating the nature, each other, and inventing. Through this process, they had arrived to the immutable "truth of Nature". Thus, to achieve the triple goal of architecture, "firmness, commodity, and delight", an architect should select a timeless form and then adjust it for the site, use, and appearance (much later, in Positivist approach, environment and use create the form in a near-perfect opposite).

Simple geometric elements form the exterior of Maria Laach Abbey, 12th century AD

Medieval architects strived in their designs to follow the structure of universe by starting with simple geometrical figures (circles, squares, equilateral triangles) and combining them into evolved forms used for both plan and sections views of the building, expecting better structural qualities and adherence to the perceived Divine intentions.

Renaissance brought a wholesale return in architecture to the Classical ideals. While Giacomo da Vignola ("The Five Orders of Architecture", 1562) and Andrea Palladio ("I quattro libri dell'architettura", 1570) had tweaked the proportions recorded by Vitruvius, their books declared the absolute, timeless principles of the architectural design.

Influence of rationalism

At the end of Renaissance a view of cosmos through an "organic analogy" (comparison to a living organism) to a mechanical philosophy describing the world where everything is measurable. Gelernter notes that the first manifestations of the new approach occurred in the Baroque style.{sfn | Gelernter | 1995 | p=116}}

Sources

• Ching, F.D.K. (2012). "Form". Architecture: Form, Space, and Order. Wiley. ISBN 978-1-118-00482-1. Retrieved 2024-02-12.
• Gelernter, Mark (1995). Sources of Architectural Form: A Critical History of Western Design Theory. Sources of Architectural Form: A Critical History of Western Design Theory. Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-4129-7. Retrieved 2024-02-12.