The father of modern architecture, Julius Caesar’s contemporary Vitruvius, identified 3 main components of architecture as firmitas, utelitas, and venustas, which is translated as “firmness, commodity, and delight”. Commodity refers to a practical function, delight to esthetic elements, and firmness to the capacity of the structure to keep its integrity and survive in the physical world as an object. The structure, which is the main bearer of firmness, is the basis of the successful design. Without structure, there can be no commodity nor delight. The end goal of an architect is creating a coherent form of structure that gives form and stability and resists stresses and strains.
The basic function of the structure is to be able to withstand loads applied on it, such as: dead load (permanent features), live load (weight added), dynamic load (motion within), and a load of external environmental effects. To perform this function, a structure has to possess the following properties:
- Be capable of achieving the state of equilibrium: applied loads must be balanced by the internal configuration of the structure.
- Possess geometric stability: elements of the structure must be arranged in such a way that they can act together efficiently.
- Have adequate strength to counter loads applied.
- The materials of the structure must possess adequate rigidity to be able to withstand the loads applied.
The human body and other creations of nature is where architects and engineers pull their inspiration from: it is from observation of the world around us where understanding and categorization of concepts arise. Marcus Vitruvius notes: “If nature has composed the human body so that in its proportions the separate individual elements answer to the total form, then the Ancients seem to have had reason to decide that bringing their creations to full completion likewise required a correspondence between the measure of individual elements and the appearance of the work as a whole.” The universal principles of architecture can be applied in reverse back to their source. As civilization develops, the capacity to see the roots of complex technologies we enjoy today fades away. If we turn back and see the body as a composition of structural elements, if we observe its components and their interrelation from an architect's point of view, we can learn a lot about ourselves and the space that we inhabit.
In a lens of architecture, the structure of the body needs to possess the same load-bearing and self-organizing properties to function efficiently. We can dissect it is parts and observe them in separation, categorize them like anatomy textbooks teach us, or we can look at it as a holistic system where each adjustment needs to be observed in the context of the entire design. Categorization of the parts is a very useful strategy in order to better understand the whole, but it is only useful in the context of the entire building and its environment. When we look at an element like a column, or an arch, to give an example, they are categorized by their function within the structure and the way they support the rest of it, not in the vacuum. Just like taking a piece out of a carrying structure can result in a total collapse of the entire building, rearranging a single part of the body without taking into consideration its contribution to the whole can result in the collapse of the entire system.
In movement, the body constantly rearranges itself through different shapes. In order to analyze it through the architect’s viewpoint, we would have to dissect the time and space in small frames and look at each one of them. In doing so, you will find that with every second in movement the structure changes its properties. The interlude of the internal and external forces, the shapes and textures of the body rearrange themselves in order to serve the purpose of each moment and create a structure that reflects the function that exists only at this point in time. We are a dynamic structure that possesses all the properties of the physical world and is capable of utilizing them when appropriate.
The perception of physical reality cannot escape the quality of movement, it is ever-present as it is an intrinsic quality of all things. Georgy Kepes, a renowned visual artist and designer, said: “We are living a mobile existence. The Earth is rotation: the sun is moving.. light and shadow are hunting each other in an indefatigable play; forms are appearing and disappearing; and man, who is experiencing all this is himself a subject to a kinetic change.” Movement is the essential characteristic of existence and observation of the body without motion does not create a comprehensive description of all its properties, but can be a helpful tool for it. Architecture, both as art and science, through its static features, “affirms the existence as a rhythm”, in words of Maldiney, “which is the articulation of breath of life”.
Anish Kapoor wrote that architecture is “a reflection or a substitution for the self, a surrogate body”. It is an extension of our capacity to perceive things, another cognitive field. Architecture gives us just another lens to study ourselves, to categorize things and to gain a deeper understanding of our structure, how it relates to itself, the space around it, and others.