New Visions for Architectural Art
2010 continues a movement only the 21st Century could
usher in: the harmonious merging of Art and
Architecture, not by gesture or tradition, but
through design integration. Modern Architecture, as
itself a sculptural art form defining spaces,
responding to culture, economies, environments and
politics, can envelope the pedestrian experience in
structurally artistic ways. Technologies everywhere
await their utilization in architecture as fine art
building components. Where we focused on program in
artful ways, we now have a voice in integrating fine
art as programmatic response.
New
Media is a wide scope of experimental art forms, and
has existed for many years in studios, galleries and
performances. The line drawn between New Media art
and Architecture is fading. Electronic visual art
captured in building components such as glass,
metals, lighting, textiles, etc., gives us an
opportunity to explore true 21st Century decorative
arts, but as the physical building blocks of our
three-dimentional responses to "need." Where we for
so long have designed buildings without art, where
our works became, if I may use Le Corbusier's phrase,
"machines for living", and art was the response by
end users to humanize, personalize and tactify such
spaces, we have given away perhaps one of the most
important elements of architecture.
Public
projects, private projects, both types offer the
architect challenges and opportunities for invention
and genius. Designing with artful building blocks as
a building's DNA infuses "life" into our glorious but
otherwise empty spaces. Seek out those programmatic
opportunities and define not by purist or elitist
means, but by harmonious celebration and embracing of
humanities fundamental need for art, as humanity has
informed us since Lascaux.