Architecture mirrors society's aspirations and beliefs, and represents its attempts to master the land -- to tame the elements and shape geography to suit itself. The sacred earth and stone mountains of early civilizations have given way to landscapes of steel... [more]

Architecture mirrors society's aspirations and beliefs, and represents its attempts to master the land -- to tame the elements and shape geography to suit itself. The sacred earth and stone mountains of early civilizations have given way to landscapes of steel and glass. The most public of all art forms, architecture also affects the most intimate parts of our lives. In modern society, we are born in buildings and die in buildings. In between, we shuttle from home to office -- from one box to another. Architecture has always been an embodiment of some theory or another, from religion to humanism to individuality, isolation, and incarceration. Where Classic architecture once used the proportions of the human form as the ideal measure, Modern architects looked to interaction with landscape, while some Postmodern architects looked to alienate their structures from their surroundings. Architecture is perhaps the most cold, ordered, and abstract of the arts. But no other art is as absolutely conclusive, as inevitable as a force of nature. The very act of stepping into a courthouse or capital building can make the most unrepentant criminal or determined protester feel just a little smaller, a little meeker. It's supposed to. The buildings' monumental forms are designed to intimidate, to keep visitors aware of their place. From massive mansions to cozy cottages, each building has its own personality, and each alters the behavior of those who step inside. The architect often toils in anonymity, without the celebrity of a DeNiro or Warhol. His most magnificent edifice is a failure if people can't thrive within it. He must sacrifice his personal style to create buildings that work in harmony with their surroundings and suit particular needs. But no painter or sculptor has the power to literally create their own world, the stage on which people play out their lives. No wonder that the egoist, atheist hero of Ayn Rand's Objectivist classic "The Fountainhead" was an architect (or, as the author wrote, "an end in himself"). In a certain sense it's the closest an artist can come to playing god. Like a composer, the architect does not bring his own creations to life, but he must know each instrument intimately. He has the photographer's skill with light; the musician's sense of rhythm (Goethe called architecture "frozen music"); the sculptor's feel for form and mass; the painter's eye for color. He designs for every sense -- how the building feels to the touch, how sounds echo through it, the way one room leads into the next, whether the ceilings loom high above or close in tight like a womb. He must be a public-policy wonk and an aesthetic, with the anthropologist's ability to read the rhythms of the era. [show less]