Fellow Classmate

Experiencing Architecture - Chapter III: Contrasting Effects of Solids and Cavities

• The rhythmic alternation of strikingly concave and concave forms of Porta di Santo Spirito produces an effect of order and harmony. There is a fitting interval between the contrasting shapes so that the eye can get its fill on the previous one before passing on to the next.
• Contrarily, Michelangelo's Porta Pia has no sense of balance or harmony. It is deliberately restless, which to Michelangelo was an effort to create an architecture that was felt to be dramatic.
• If an architect wants his or her building to be a real experience, he or she bust employ combinations of forms, which will force the spectator to active observation.
• A three-dimensional composition in which the spectator is expected to perceive both convexities and concavities demands an energetic effort and a constant change of conception. 
• After the efforts of the Renaissance to create a pure and simple style, there followed a period in which artists all over Europe threw themselves in a mannered experimentation. In architecture they employed classical columns, portals, mouldings and cornices that had come down to them.
• Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne in Rome has a deep cavity cut into the solid block, which appears darker behind the light pairs of columns.  A stone passageway leads to a little court where the same contrast of cavity and columns is repeated.  The two sides of the the tiny court are formed by a colonnade with a barrel vault, which has three light openings cutting obliquely into the cylindrical surface of the ceiling.  From this court another passageway leads to a smaller court of different character and from there through dark archways to the rear street.
• Palazzo Massimo's composition is full of light and dark and open and closed.
• In Pennsylvania, Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water is a combination of cavity, rock, architecture, and sculpture. 
• The house is composed entirely of horizontal masses that seem as natural as the rocks of the waterfall. 
• Wright uses rough-hewn stone, smooth slab of white concrete, and windows of glass and steel.
• The large living room has a stone floor, which uses parts of the very rock on which the house is built.
• The walls are made from glass and stone.
• Falling Water is an example of Frank Lloyd Wright's endeavors to bring architecture into harmony with nature. 
• Police Headquarters in Copenhagen is a composition of regular cavities joined together in a dramatic sequence leading to a an innermost rectangular court where the huge stone cylinders of columns are set up in effective contrast.
• The employment of masses and cavities together in effective contrasts leads to works which lie in one of the peripheries of architecture.

Experiencing Architecture - Chapter II: Solids and Cavities in Architecture

• Portals are often described as "gaping," which can be seen in the Portal of Palazzetto Zuccari, Rome, where the entrance of the building is formed as the gaping jaws of a giant.
• Animation of a building makes it easier to experience its architecture as a whole.
• "View through the Keyhole," one of the sights of Rome, is an example of viewing reality as if looking at a photograph. Through the keyhole, one gets the view of the sequestered precincts and the distant view of the dome of St. Peter's. The view of the keyhole was deliberately planned from a fixed point, where nothing interferes to distract your attention.
• By association, we are able to recognize images or objects just by looking at it. For example, we can tell if a building is a church just by observing certain characteristics or elemental details, such as a steeple or maybe even a cross.
• Building materials is the medium or architecture.
• Architecture should incorporate both solids and voids ("cavity") for visual balance.
• Ordinarily, convex forms are seen as figure, while concave as ground.

Experiencing Architecture - Chapter I: Basic Observations

• Architecture has been called Fine Arts for centuries, along with painting and sculpture.
• Architecture is not produced by simply adding plans and sections, and it cannot be explained; it must be experienced.
• Architects works with form and mass just as a sculptor, and like a painter he works with color; however, unlike sculptures and paintings, architecture is a functional art.
• Architecture confines space so people can dwell and utilize them.
• Architecture's main purpose is not only to be seen from the outside. It's shapes are formed around human beings to be lived in.
• Since architecture revolves around people's lives, architects must be aware of people's surroundings and way of life. What may seem right and natural in one cultural environment may not fit in another; similarly, what is fitting and proper in one generation may not blend with the new generation.
• Copying architecture from a past era can be disastrous. Buildings that are copied from the past may seem awkward and stand out with buildings of the current era.
• An architect's work is intended to live on into a distant future; therefore, an architect's design should be ahead of its time when planned, so that it will be in keeping with the times as long as it stands.
• Good architecture is one that is being utilized as the architect had planned.
• Unlike other branches of art, architecture is incapable of communicating an intimate, personal message from one person to another. It lacks emotional sensitivity. However, rhythm and harmony must be attributed to the organization which is the underlying idea of the art.
• Architecture may seem cold and abstract, but no other art form is more connected to a person's daily life.
• Form can give architecture an impression of heaviness or lightness, for example: a wall built of large stones will appear heavier as opposed to a wall that is smooth, even though the smooth wall may actually be heavier.
• Impressions of hardness and softness, of heaviness and lightness, are connected with the surface character of materials. The human eye has the ability to see such differences without the need to touch the material.
• Most buildings consist of a combination of hard and soft, light and heavy, taut and slack, and of many kinds of surfaces. To experience architecture, one must be aware of all these elements.