The Perception of Beauty - the Mental Archive and the Element of Surprise
- Albert Adlercreutz
- 30 maj
- 10 min läsning
Uppdaterat: 29 aug.
Would you dare to dress up in baroque clothing complete with an ornate jacket, Vandyke collar, white socks up to the knee and loose puffy satin trousers, crowned by a bombastic wig when leaving your home for your daily errands? More importantly, do you find it appropriate in contemporary society to do so? That is a question that I like to impose when interrogated by any new acquaintance at a house party or bar after telling them that I study architecture. People love to ask the question – why can we not design houses like we used to? It is a fair question per se, considering the life length of modern buildings (Rakennuslehti, 2018), but what makes the question more infected than that is that the people asking that question usually continues with asking why we couldn’t just build in Jugendstil or in classicist manners.
Instead of giving a short monologue about, for example, contextuality and architectural progress, I prefer to ask the question that I began this text with, followed by the elaboration that it would simply not be accurate to build a housing unit in Jugendstil in 2025. I might, respectfully, enlighten the acquaintance on the topics of Jugendstil décor as a reflection of the political climate during the late 1800s and early 1900s and why that sort of ornament is inappropriate in our contemporary time, but only if the acquaintance seems genuinely interested in the subject. According to a study by the British Government, people prefer the style of classical architecture to contemporary styles (Dezeen, 2009). With this in mind it isn’t much of a surprise that the aforementioned is a frequent question. To plan and execute a building according to classical rules in our contemporary climate (accurate replicas of demolished buildings in their historical context not to be included*), would not only be ahistorical but simply strange - as strange as dressing in accurate baroque clothing.
One example is the proposed design for a new building in Stockholm by Nils Freckeus Arkitekter. The proposal that would replace a recently demolished building, Läkarhuset from the 60s was, quite amusingly**, ordered by the Swedish far-right party of Sverigedemokraterna (Mitti, 2023). The building is a great example of how a strictly classical, and probably beautiful according to some, becomes almost uncomfortable considering that it has no connection to the epoque of the style it represents.
Not only that, but I believe that the contemporary architectural collegium has failed if the only answer to winning the hearts of the public is to look backwards and the idea of the return of the classicism is problematic, populistic, and quite frankly lazy. Therefore, I want to look into the complex concept of beauty.
*like the case of Hotel Kämp in Helsinki (Helsingin Sanomat, 2015)
**There is a clear link between classicist idealization and the far right (The New Statesman, 2018), however, that subject will be left uncovered in this essay
Background
The interrogation scenario that I mentioned in the introduction is only one example of a situation that I believe many of my peers have encountered as an architect student or practitioner. The public is disappointed in the way contemporary architecture is designed, stylistically (Dezeen, 2009 & The Nation, 2023) and qualitatively (Rakennuslehti, 2018). As quality is something that is quite rational to solve and whose solution usually lies somewhere else in the vast planning process of a new building, I believe that the question of aesthetics is the most pressing and perhaps the most complicated to elaborate on. Furthermore, architecture is a subject that almost anyone living anywhere in a built environment will have an opinion on. As the average person does not hold a degree in architecture it is understandable that they focus on the very thing that they are entitled to comment on - beauty. It is perfectly understandable that people tend to seek after classical architecture (Dezeen, 2009) as they find it to be the last known general example of, in their opinion, beautiful architecture.
The reason that I am writing this work is to initiate a discussion on how we can design buildings that are aesthetically pleasing and amongst all diverging from the almost century-old modernistic ideals. If the answer would be to go back to pre-1930s architecture, we would risk a contemporary architectural movement that completely lacks temporal context. The educated architect will know that beauty lies beyond color, symmetry, and ornament, but by looking into the subject on a more behavioral level we can understand the moving factors behind the perception of beauty and prove the critics that beauty does not mean stylistic regression.
The mental archive of the viewer
Beauty is arguably one of the subjects that are most debated on in art schools and any aesthetical field. Furthermore, there is a constant debate on whether we can measure beauty - in other words whether beauty is objective or purely subjective. The research on the objectivity of beauty is often conducted through the field of neuroscience rather than philosophy. This of course makes the discussion inherently scientific. Peter F. Smith has written a very interesting book, The Dynamics of Delight, on the subject of beauty that processes the subject from a neuroscientific and logical perspective but also from a philosophical standpoint. Smith believes that the discussion on beauty gets heavily controversial and polarized due to the fact that its participants usually hold a stylistic ideology (Smith, 2003, p. 2-3). With this, he underlines that the subject of beauty must be studied from an angle where all ideology must be forgotten, and purely rational facts studied. This gives me reason to believe that there is indeed a solution to the problem of public despise of new architecture beyond that of bringing back former styles.
According to Smith (2003, p. 23-24), one of the key algorithms of the human brain when it comes to measuring beauty is its ability to organize its experiences. When we are exposed to a new building the very first thing our brain does is that it compares it to all buildings we have seen before. It references an archive of subconscious memories. Only thereafter it provides a sensory response which we can then interpret.
With this we can learn two important aspects of perceiving beauty. The first is that every new building slightly changes our perception of beauty as our archive of experiences is extended (Smith, 2003, p. 24-25). This is a highly interesting mechanism as it pinpoints one of the very reasons why taste differs between seemingly similar people. Suppose that you have grown up in a city that for one reason or another consists of a range of contemporary architecture. Family holidays were perhaps spent in modern resorts and exposure to classical architecture limited. If you instead had grown up in an older city or maybe a country that on average consist of a broad range of diverse and old buildings and you have been continuously exposed to all sorts of historical sites and cities around the world, we would have the reason to believe that your architectural preferences would differ significantly.
I believe that if you have been exposed to large varieties of classical architecture you are more prone to appreciate modernistic architecture, since it diverges from your mental library of buildings. My reason to believe this lies in another significant aspect that Smith talks about in his book, namely that buildings that provoke emotion are popular, even if they don’t match the criteria of beauty (Smith, 2003, p. 27). Take The Barbican, for example. The building was absolutely bashed by the public when it was introduced (also a highly sensorial response). Nowadays, the Barbican is a popular cultural venue, architectural attraction and home to over 4000 residents (Williams, 2023). As much as there is reason to believe the aforementioned, there is as much reason to believe that it is completely the opposite. It would be a fascinating read if someone were to do further research on how our own environment shape our architectural preferences.
With that said, the buildings that create friction between one’s own personal archive of experienced buildings are the one that spark emotion. This may be the reason why we sometimes encounter the odd situation of having to battle against our own philosophy. We may see a building that typically goes against our design philosophy that makes us feel good, in other words provokes a positive sensory response, but our own believes make us question its beauty. According to Smith (2003, p. 32), our sensory response gets tickled when we experience something that goes beyond our intuition and, therefore, breaks the pattern. This can be observed both in a broader perspective with buildings disrupting the cityscape pattern but also on a closer level, within a building’s design, when an unexpected element breaks the pattern (Smith, 2003, p. 34), thus creating a sensory response on the viewer.
A Network of Preferences
If architects are to design buildings that are to be generally or universally perceived as a beautiful, they must face an armada of personal preferences based on an even larger network of architectural experiences, archived in the brains of its viewers. Hilde Hein (in Graham, 2006. p. 244) states that the aesthetic quality of a public artwork is a subjective individual experience of an individual act of expression. This goes for architecture as well. Furthermore, a building design goes through an even more immense filtering process before it is built. First the building is designed by the architect and therefore an expression of that architect’s mental archive. Then, the proposal is chosen by a jury of multiple personal archives before it is then built and perceived by the public. Graham argues that architecture first and foremost must solve the problem of utility and aesthetics comes after that. Otherwise, the production risks being a product of architectural folly, a building with no purpose. In that sense he believes that architecture should not be perceived purely as a work of art. (Graham, 2006. p. 243.)
On the note whether buildings must be planned according to the public opinion Graham states the following:
Given that at the heart of aesthetic appreciation lie taste and pleasure, publicly purchased art makes no more sense than would the public purchase and distribution of steak, say, rather than chicken, on the basis of opinion polls that show that the majority to prefer steak
(Graham, 2006. p. 243).
As I take it, he relates architecture to something more vital than art. A commodity, like food, that serves other purpose than tasting well or looking good. One can also interpret this as calling out the risks of giving too much power to the public. If the majority of the public gets to decide, there will always be a large group of people opposing, as in any case of democracy. More alarmingly when steak is chosen all chicken is ruled out. If classical architecture would be chosen again and again, then all other architectural disciplines would be ruled out. There would never be space for diversity let alone progress.
The Symmetry – Disruption Dynamics
Smith as well as the active architect Thomas Heatherwick both indicate that one of the most fundamental dynamics of perceived beauty is rhythm and more importantly the occasional disruption of rhythm (Heatherwick 2023, part 1 & Smith 2003, p. 30). Smith (2003, p. 30) precisely points out that beauty is not conformity nor uniformity even though symmetry is an element often discussed as something that modern architecture is lacking and classical architecture is not. Both Heatherwick and Smith refer to musical pieces and chords, with the notion that a chord is beautiful should it resonate clearly, but even more so if it has complexity in form of unexpected notes and complex chords. Similarly, I believe that a musical piece must have a clear structure that is easily perceived by the listener. Only then complexity and elements diverging from the pattern are effective. A building that does too much, in other words provides too many elements of surprise to the viewer, fail to uphold rhythm or structure, and thus fails to surprise. I believe that the notions on rhythm vs disruption resonate with the very foundation of architectural perception and the whole them of this essay: that rhythm resonates with our mental library, providing a sense of familiarity, while the disruption of the established rhythm provides the sensorial response of surprise.
The Standardization of Beauty and Further Research
While writing this text I have encountered that surprisingly little research has been conducted on the subject of beauty in architecture. This is especially surprising considering the avid discussion on architectural aesthetics. Theories such as that of sensorial perception and that of rhythm and disruption provides an interesting base for future studies on the subject and points at the fact that architectural beauty isn’t bound to a certain philosophy or style, rather a set of principles that go beyond style philosophies and ornament. This would help standardize beauty and, in its standardization, create breathing space for visionaries to enroll in more bold design endeavors. If more studies where to be conducted on the subject and aspiring architects
were to look beyond the classical teachings of beauty and beyond the immortal utilitarian force of modernism, I believe that a new renaissance of popular architecture can be achieved. To prevent an ahistorical revolution of classicist fetichism like the one that I began this essay with as an example, I believe it is important to get the public to trust the abilities of the architectural collegium and their abilities in creating a contemporary design language that the public understands and appreciate. The only way of doing so is teaching by doing. Together with the utilitarian teachings and progressions of the modernist movement there is no doubt that a new architecture of beauty can increase the relationship between architects and the public and improve society on all levels, just like modernism promised and failed to do.
References
Literature
Smith, P. F. (2003). The dynamics of delight: Architecture and aesthetics. Taylor & Francis Group.
Graham, G. (2006) Can There Be Public Architecture? The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism.
Heatherwick, T. (2023) Humanise: A Maker’s Guide to Building Our World. Random House.
O’Brien, H. (21.11.2018). How classical architecture became a weapon for the far right. The New Statesman. https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2018/11/how-classical-architecture- became-weapon-far-right
Web articles
D’Aprile, M. (22.03.2023). Lost Causes – the growing nostalgia of contemporary architecture.
Dezeen. (16.12.2009). People prefer traditionally designed buildings – YouGov. Dezeen.
Williams, M. (01.02.2023). Brutal or beautiful? The Barbican Estate. Modus. https://ww3.rics.org/uk/en/modus/built-environment/homes-and-communities/barbican- estate.html
Rakennuslehti. (28.09.2018). Analyysi: Asuntomarkkinat ovat rikki – Uusien asuntojen ongelmista puhutaan jatkuvasti, mutta silti niille löytyy aina ostaja. Rakennuslehti.
Salmaso, E. (24.08.2023) SD vill se Läkarhuset i 1800-talsstil. Mitt i Stockholm.
Manninen, A. (7.12.2015) Hotelli Kämp revittiin maan tasalle, mutta samalla koitti Helsingin purkuvimman lopun alku. Helsingin Sanomat. https://www.hs.fi/pkseutu/art-2000002871278.html
Pictures
Perledarte (13.11.2014). Frans Hals, The Laughing Knight, 1624, canvas, 83 x 67 cm (Wallace Collection, London). https://www.flickr.com/photos/perledarte/15779489181