Unit 20 The Power of Architecture

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 486.

1 Introduction2interface

1.1 Read the text title and hypothesize what the text is about. Write down your hypothesis.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

1.8 What do you know concerning this issue? List your ideas in the table left column “I know”.

1.9 If you know answers to these questions write them down in the space given after each question.

1.10 Circle in the list the words and expressions you know. Write down their translation in the table and calculate the percentage of your lexical competence.

“There is no doubt whatever about the influence of architecture and structure upon human character and action. We make our buildings and afterwards they make us. They regulate the course of our lives.”

Winston Churchill, addressing the English Architectural Association, 1924.

Architecture is art and it is not art; it is art and it is something more, or less, as the case may be. This is its paradox and its glory, and always has been. Architecture is not like a painting or a novel or a poem; its role is to provide shelter, and its reality in the physical world makes it unlike anything else that we commonly place in the realm of art. Unlike a symphony, a building must fulfill a certain practical function, giving us a place to work, or to live, or to shop or to worship or to be entertained. But a building is not at all like other things that we place in the realm of the practical but that may have aesthetic aspirations, such as an airplane, an automobile, or a cooking pot. For we expect a work of architecture, when it succeeds in its aesthetic aims, to be capable of creating a more profound set of feelings than a well-designed toaster.

Architecture certainly has the power to inspire, but it actually goes much deeper than that. Architecture has a profound influence on every aspect of our everyday lives. Our lifestyle, the patterns of our day, our relationships with the people around us, our success and satisfaction in our jobs are all shaped significantly by the physical environment.

If a person works in an isolating cubicle in a rat-maze office, commutes on traffic–snarled freeways, eats most meals at anonymous fast-food joints and lives in a cookie-cutter subdivision that does nothing to promote neighborliness, then he or she may well be depressed and unhappy. If that same person works in a well-designed office with carefully managed places for privacy/teaming/communication, walks a few minutes on pedestrian-friendly streets to work, shops at friendly local stores, eats at distinctive cafes run by personable entrepreneurs and lives in a place that, by its arrangement of spaces, encourages casual encounters with neighbors, then they will have a very different life.

Even if we are unconscious of the degree to which architecture is affecting our lives, we are still operating under its power. How much money we spend on gasoline, electricity, other utilities and mortgage is all a result of what kind of architectural environment we inhabit. How much time we spend commuting, hauling friends and family from place to place, doing yard work, cleaning and maintaining our houses are also all a result of what kind of architectural environment we inhabit.

The image of a building has the ability to inspire, but that is a very small fraction of the power of architecture. The skyline of a city has the ability to impress, but the city is defined far more by the way the streets, public spaces, buildings, offices, shops, entertainment spaces, residences, etc. work together to become an influential crucible for people's lives.