ABSTRACT
Vitruvius (1960) writes that architecture must contain firmitas, utilitas et venustas (firmness, utility and delight). However, no systematic account of their integration is forthcoming and this leaves the constituent parts of architecture like randomly listed ingredients. Until we better understand the part each plays in its contribution to the whole, we remain at a loss. How are we to appreciate architecture? Immediately we are confronted with the
thought that when discriminating between building and architecture, we do so on the basis of some feature of architecture that lies beyond mere building. If so, then we appreciate architecture, as art, by isolating this additional characteristic and attending to it as the source of our aesthetic response. Thus, if we think of a building as a useful construction, we must ask what supplement is required to grant it the status of architecture – what bestows upon this edifice the status of an art? A number of features have been identified as candidates, each said to confer
the required elevation in status. Aestheticism, so called, picks out decoration as its preferred choice. Building adorned with decoration is architecture. Hence the difference between a bicycle shed and Lincoln Cathedral is that both are buildings but only the second is architecture. The cathedral is enhanced by decoration. Such a view can hardly be sustained after minimal reflection. It misconceives both aesthetics and architecture; for in isolating decoration, it thereby subtracts the function of the building from the realm of the aesthetic. We would be left with an object of appreciation so obscure as to be virtually unintelligible. Decoration, cut adrift from firmness and utility would, at best, amount to the merely pleasant. Such a misconception of aesthetics would thereby leave out of consideration the significance of the building. Then how best are we to think of significance in the aesthetics of architecture?
