Architecture's Approximate Beauty

Contested in this study is the assumption that beauty in architecture has a simple and single definition. Not one, but three kinds of beauty are introduced and distinguished. They are not ranked, despite the long history of one or another being given superior standing. The three, the built work’s beauty, that of its many and varied representations (drawings, models, simulations), and that of its motivating idea are shown to both complement and conflict with one another in judgments about quality. Both spatial and temporal dimensions of architectural order come into the question, as do the composition and operation of a building’s parts or elements—what appears and what occurs in a work of architecture. Against the tendency to link concepts of beauty with notions of order and permanence, attention is given to the concrete conditions of projects which are always imperfect and continually changing. This focus, in turn, leads to recognition of the importance of notions of disproportionality, fragmentation, and decay. Projects plus writings in and outside architecture from antiquity to the present are adduced to argue for the reality of approximation in architectural beauty