Aesthetics in Architecture and Masterplanning

Aesthetics as Skin:

The design of a building or masterplan is sliced into systems/strategies "absolutely required to make it work" whilst aesthetic is conceived as a skin deep treatment...and in some really unimaginative organisations, a take what you like buffet laid out in front of the client (Scandinavian chic, Russian bling, Japanese minimal etc)

As one of my colleagues from an earlier practise put it, "we know the masterplan will work, now if the client wants Georgian or Venetian facade it’s all up for grabs". Ironically forgetting that the client often approaches a design practise because of a specific language or aesthetic used by the practise, without that, the practise is only adopting a role halfway between a manager and contractor (with a "we get shit done" motto, with emphasis on “done”).

In another instance, when a university professor who was hired as a local consultant for a project tried querying the choice and nature of aesthetic for various buildings within the masterplan, the then lead of the organisation confidently asserted that "he ran a massive practise and he was not going to invest his valuable time in having a discussion on aesthetics" implying he was available to discuss "workability" but not the aesthetics, as if the two were distinctly independent elements.

In yet another instance, we were debriefed with the key opportunities, constraints and decisions with regards to consultant inputs and now all that was remaining was "some fluff...make it look good etc"...again implying design of form / language = aesthetic was something that happens later...like applying skin over a pre-organised skeleton.

All of the above are instances where aesthetic is conceptualised as the outside, the skin, the facade, a garment, an incidental by product of all decisions taken to date, a buffet for the client to pick a style from...while the composing logic of elements (form, space, order, scale etc) within the building / masterplan are result of informed apolitical absolute science of how things work (!) A key stage in our profession and any project when as design professionals we relinquish the very contribution we were trained towards…design of form and space (as elements of composition )

One line winners:

This rigid and clear separation / differentiation between system and aesthetic have come about due to changes between client and design offices. There is an increased pressure to be able to communicate complex spatial choices / compositions in a linear 2 + 2 -one line logic (not sure if this is a collective judgement by the design profession on our clients' patience, attention span and ability to comprehend or an honest acceptance of our profession's banality in the current financial market). This structure of having to secure that careful stagewise sign off and a nod from the client, has resulted in slicing the project into elements that can be presented to the client as absolutes, combined by a “dumb” it down (keep it simple) motto...linear steps with set of complex numbers providing confident assurances…the key to securing a sign off.

On the other hand, aesthetics is complicated, movies, poetry, theatre, paintings, photography, dreams, psychology...almost everything we as designers would like to embed within our built environment and public spaces. Even attempting to communicate composition choices...the right skew, the rhythm of built to void, etc would sound out of place. How can this be communicated and receive a sign off? we may even need to reveal our political alignments as our compositions get informed by aesthetic...this brings us to a position where talking about aesthetics is consciously marginalised, and the built profession retreats from any discourse around it, to create “forgiving” masterplans and “flexible” built environments.

Aesthetics as tool to set priorities / hierarchy:

To propose an alternative to this way of looking at aesthetic, Kostas came up with the example of three Italian cars, Lamborghini, Alfa Romeo and Ferrari...all beautiful cars, driven by systems, influenced by strategies, but each maintains a specific aesthetic. Here Aesthetic is not skin deep but asserts hierarchy on priorities, what systems take a precedence, which ones step back, when does a car need to be absolutely aerodynamic. What aspects need to be efficient and which ones don't. The choice of Aesthetic is made as a clear intent and the rest of the process is geared towards achieving that intent.

Colin Pullan ex chair of Urban Design Group in his last foreword in the monthly newsletter wrote "Imagine if Marcello Gandini had to take on board all the comments of today's inclusive design review panel when he penned the Lamborghini Countach? Flip up wing doors? Nope - not very accessible to wheel chairs. No rear visibility, deafening noise, a planet warming V12 petrol engine? Fat chance getting that past sustainability expert...Had Marcello taken all their advice he would had been lucky enough to emerge with a bicycle. The world would had been denied one of its most iconic, if imperfect, examples of automotive creativity, and young boys in the 1980s left that wall poster of a chimpanzee on a toilet".

If all cars were to be designed with same principles of efficiency in all aspects equally programmed with form influenced by maximum aerodynamism, all forms would simply converge towards one single expression...and yet that does not happen, because forms result from aesthetic choices. 

To conclude what if the earlier mentioned example of Georgian facade is contextualised when it sits along a Georgian Square within a Georgian city fabric shaped by specific politics and history, and in this case the choice of Aesthetics is not simply a facade but influences scale of the square, the height of floors, the nature of landscape, the very composition of urban space….The rigid regimented approach of 9m wide streets for service is suspended for Venice to exist, the infrastructure adapts to the intended urban fabric (not the other way around!)

According to us, Aesthetics is a political choice; it is not a result and it definitely isn’t cosmetic. 

To quote Jacques Ranciere “The word “aesthetics”, like the word “politics”, has been much maligned and too frequently used as an insult. I understand aesthetics in the original sense of the word, neither as an analysis of autonomous works of art nor as a connoisseurship of the beautiful but as a form of knowledge that proceeds through a particular interplay of sense, imagination and reason - “the distribution of the sensible”.

Note: above is a summary of an ongoing discussion with my colleague and friend Konstantinos Dimitrantzos. It reflects only our opinion and not of our current or any previous employers. We come in peace, etc.