Poetic Architecture
Rarely in the practical and functionalist world, architects/interior designers think of creating spaces which are poetic or which are about experience of emotions. To begin with, one must understand what poetic spaces mean, architecture and poems, both are nothing, but articulation of elements. While architecture is articulation of spaces, poem is articulation of words. Architecture can be literal with the propagated ideas like ‘Form follows function’. But poem, rather than being literal is more often metaphorical and follows rhythm where the expression is more important rather than conveying a definite meaning or being literal. When the lines between Poetry and Architecture blur, the result can be an exquisitely experiential piece of art. Experience and expression become more important in poetic spaces rather than literal translation of built elements.
Environment, always sensual even in its most Spartan form of stone and light, stimulates the senses and offers an emotional basis that is valuable for architectural design. Logical analysis of the sense of environment is in fact a methodology applied for extracting, denuding and projecting this emotional basis as its presence surrounds the building. Therefore, in order to transform the environment into a landscape, a landscape surrounding the building, its three basic components are analyzed and recorded as architectural design parameters; these are its topography, its microclimate and its ecosystem. The result of the analysis is to build a shell-filter that, through its structural resistance is able to eliminate the destructibility of natural elements and, through its penetrability, to transform the initial introvert sense of protection and safety into a final extrovert sense of friendliness towards the natural environment. It is precisely this extrovert sense of amicability that impels the resident/user to participate and return, after completion of the project, to the emotional basis, which the poet-architect sensed and recorded at the beginning of the project. The return of a resident-user that is due to an emotive relationship developed as a result of a masterful architectural solution constitutes a basic element that ensures continuous protection and conservation of key environment components.
The multitude of building materials, either structural, ornamental or used for technological installations, available to choose from, and increased building equipment requirements pose an immediate management issue.
The poet-architect is concerned by two basic and required properties with respect to structural building materials, mainly those that concern the structural frame and the technological installations; these properties are their indissoluble relationship with the service networks of the structure. Indeed, the specific elements of the building that constitute the its substance per se, by design and requirements, have a very long life that greatly exceeds the narrow time limits of the design period, the life of the resident/user and the current perception of the built environment. It is thus considered appropriate to inscribe on the building’s body, which is destined to exist historically, philosophical ideas of resistant authenticity values, values worthy of being handed down to future residents/users of the building.
An architect/ interior designer must create spaces which are experiential and have sensory qualities as human needs cannot be reduced to just functional ones. A space must be experienced in its totally and this can only happen when it has been carved with such precision and articulation just as a poet expresses his emotions and experience in a poem.
Ar. Rohit Bharti
(Senior Faculty)
IVS School of Design, Noida