Beauty, or the discussion of it, is Pandora's Box. In art school, as in architecture school, beauty-as an idea- is the silent body in the room that generally no instructor wants to acknowledge. If acknowledged, it's labelled a pitfall and a danger, pushed aside for the more noble pursuit of truth. Beauty is too subjective. In Elaine Scarry's book "On Beauty and Being Just", she takes on the challenge of this discussion and charges us to reconsider our definition of beauty. Beauty is an inspiration that invites us to seek out truth, according to Scarry, rather than the embodiment of truth itself.
And who can deny the intense experience of beauty? Multi-sensory and seemingly Pavlovian in certainty, we have all had experiences that imprint on our being something undeniable, though we generally can't explain the source of our certainty. Reported most frequently and informally in the `natural' landscape, beauty is observed anywhere for any individual: exquisite asymmetry in a floral arrangement, the strange and haunting allure of detritus in an abandoned space, the grace of a powerful carnivore in the act of killing its prey, a gesture, a whisper, an intangible...
Why are we afraid to speak of beauty? It's possible that the word itself- too simple and overused, cheapens our experience. Beauty might be cast too wide as a net descriptive, holding everything. It may, when uttered, cause the experience to dissipate, packaging the phenomenon with the result of dulling it. We might feel unduly required to defend the weighty word once uttered. The logical next step is to define beauty. Elaine Scarry defines the qualities of beauty in four parts:
1. Beauty is sacred. Which is to say, if beauty is self-evident, then it is like truth, `clinging to an immortal sphere.'
2. Beauty is unprecedented. In any moment we recognize something to be beautiful, we are acknowledging the uniqueness of the moment, the place, the object.
3. Beauty is lifesaving. By this, Scarry refers to the life-giving, life-affirming properties of beauty-- how everything about the experience appears more vivid than what surrounds it, and that it's retraction feels like a loss of life.
4. Beauty incites deliberation. Finally, Scarry is pointing to the intense experience of beauty as the starting point for searching. When we experience beauty, we feel certain and yet we also ultimately experience errors or disappointment. "But if the person or thing outlives its own beauty--then it is sometimes not just turned away from but turned upon, as though it has enacted a betrayal." We must then decide our stance about beauty. We can't experience an 'error' and not feel the impact of the dissolution of belief.
Temporary beauty is really the temporal nature of us, as interfaces with the world. Scarry uses the example of a beautiful vase that catches our eye. The longer we look at it, she proposes, the beauty ceases. "Was the beauty of the object false, or was it real but brief?", she asks. If we redefine beauty as a sacred, unprecedented, lifesaving provocation for the search for truth, then any perceived beauty is real and is always limited by time. The vase did not fail us, however it caused us to recognize something that we must search to find the truth or meaning in.
Why discuss beauty? There is a pedagogical order in the way architects are educated. The sequence of classes corresponds to the expected sequence learning, to then influence our thesis explorations and eventually our life as designers. My dual life as an artist and then a designer has made me painfully aware that I do not naturally possess a logically sequential way of working, at least not in traditionally accepted structures.
There is a tension between `making' and `defining' that has always existed in my own practice. I believe I make from a place that is inspired by beauty-- the unacknowledged body in the room. The core of making, for me, has intangible aspects that deny a level of explanation, at least at their inception. I do not begin the process of making with a manifesto as much as I would like to. There is not a concise thesis, no rehearsed argument, and no bullet points of reasoning. For some time, these processes have existed separately. Because of this duality, beauty and the origin of making are often pushed aside in order to complete an order of operations.
There is a statement of intent, residing consciously, objectively, and separately from the act of making. A manifesto so articulated that it's hard to imagine a bridge that will mediate the two phenomena: Making and Defining. My intent (To explore the potential of temporary architectural installations on identified sites; a juxtaposition that poses questions about the nature of site, the role of architecture, and the use of constructs as a social tool) has a hidden agenda. An inarticulate one. It is akin to beauty, in close proximity to the temporal, and is all about making for the sake of making.
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