I don't see any point in trying to objectively define the properties of architecture because the subjective participation can't be objectified. If you say that the properties of architecture are validated by the aesthetic response they evoke then you are saying that a subjective condition verifies objective data. In science objective data must be verified by other objective data in order to exclude the subjective. Thus if something is objectively defined that means it does not require subjectivity. It is such and such whether or not we say so.
It's completely impossible to objectify aesthetic response unless we limit the aesthetic to certain brain conditions that can be independently measured and falsified. Why pursue a theory if its most fundamental premise is wrong? wc ________________________________ From: Frances Kelly <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Sunday, May 10, 2009 10:14:06 PM Subject: RE: Architecture and Philosophy Frances to Saul... You roughly wrote that architecture is the ordering and structuring of information with a consideration for its aesthetic effect. Sometimes for you this may result in a building and at other times graphic design or a painting, so that we can talk about the architecture or composition of such a given work. My rewriting on this would be that any object or work is architecture if its form is ordered and structured with information, to the extent that the information can stimulate or yield an aesthetic effect, which as a result can furthermore be talked about. My guess here is that you hold the existence of architecture to be found in such acts as the forming, framing, ordering, structuring, and composing of any object. You also seem to hold that the cause or stimulus or result of an architectonic act, as a visual vehicle or work or stimulus, can be a graphic picture or plastic sculpture or tectonic architecture, to include for example acts of drawing, printing, painting, molding, carving, modeling, staging, dancing, busking, performing, or building. You furthermore seem to hold that the main content of the architectural vehicle is information, and that the effect of the work if held as architecture must be aesthetic; and that the key response is to talk about the work. One claim in dispute for me here is the need for aesthetics and presumably artistics in determining what objects will be architectural. The notion of an "architectonic" structure in pragmatism for the composition and categorization of phenomena emerged out of an appreciation for constructed architecture on the part of early pragmatists. This is likely a just use of the term, as are other metaphoric uses, but this use should not ignore the limited primary use of the term, which stands for the design of any built environment. The term "pictographic" thus is available to specifically stand for the design of artifacts like drawings and printings and paintings. Any graphic or plastic or tectonic artifact is also a sign that will bear information in its form.
