When Architecture Speaks: Between Architecture and Media Communication

Architecture, the visual form of creative space-making that keeps building up inside a person’s mind, is a work of art; an art that seeks ties to the inside of the onlooker. Over the years, architecture has emerged as a visually rich story that froze the historical events across the painted ceilings as in Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo or as inscriptions carved on walls in the Brihadeeswara temple in India. While some of the ’frozen history’ spoke for themselves, the others opened a whole new dimension of understanding when it took a step closer with documentation and research findings. This repository of architectural storytelling makes a building’s architecture ‘speak its heart out’, making the user achieve a connection to the truth of the making of the space.

Journalism and written records have created a parallel track to the ongoing architectural evolution, which simultaneously records the architectural metamorphosis involved, and makes it an empirical record for any study, be it past or future based. A similar record-based approach has been prevalent in archaeology where the focus has been towards understanding the past. Archaeology and architecture amidst being adjacent disciplines in a research point of view, differ with the process in the way that architecture involves the understanding of the future along with the past. It tracks the evolution in the past, understands the proven techniques and takes advancement to build a strategic plan for the future of architecture. Such plans are further strengthened by public reception that weighs the ‘workability vs. welcome’ amongst the common population. This is where architectural Journalism strives towards seeking the power of words and mass communication for a closer look into what we could possibly call ‘true architecture’.

Amidst the research-oriented role of Journalism, emerged the communication-oriented role, which focuses towards connecting with the population on the whole. Infused with socio-cultural impact, architectural communication streamlines the user-space interaction, making it devoid of external factors such as conventional belief systems, along with valuing the internal factors that a structure’s architecture brings in. Across decades, the communication-oriented role of Journalism and Architecture has brought in several historical movements, which were a result of inconsistencies in such ‘external factor-internal factor’ collision that confused the users with regard to their personal perception of architectural value. Their personal perception (internal factor) collided with the public perception (external factor), resulting in mass numbers that found a direction with art and architecture movements.

During the Art Noveau-Art Deco conflicts in the past, a high mix of this personal-public perception was seen when the individual craftsmen started losing their art to the machine-made building modules that better fitted the vertically expanding structural revolution(the beginning of skyscrapers).With that being the Industrial era that saw the dawn of media communication, the protestors were able to gather the opinions and raise criticism with the help of media. Since then, media has had a major role in recognizing the shift in the opinions of the masses and let them find their voice amongst the silencing materialistic transformation of architecture.

While architecture’s public opinions found their voices in mass media such as newspapers and magazines, the individualistic views of architects in promoting styles and educating the public found its forte with writings by the architects. The rich fusion of writing and architecture (both being art) were prevalent as early as the times of Architect William Morris, who was a poet, textile designer and an architect who redefined the infamous interlink of architecture, interior design, décor and art. While architects like him redefined architectural values at micro-levels (homes), the modern architects such as Le Corbusier redefined values at macro-levels across cities and cultures. In his book “The city of To-morrow and it’s planning” he introduced urban problem-solving concepts that paved way for a new vision of the people, particularly those of the architectural fraternity. Such written references serve an equal value as that of a research/documentation work, because of the fact that both aim towards keeping the people aware of trial and error in architecture.

“A hundred times have I thought New York is a catastrophe, and 50 times: It’s a beautiful catastrophe” –Le Corbusier

It cannot be denied that architecture is the only discipline that is capable of standing the test of time with its influence on people and it would be great value if the influence could be better understood with written/published works that record the design considerations. Life and Architecture have an obscure overlay that involves psychology and physiological responses and more of what lies between a user and a space. Recording such life-influencing modes of architecture in print or digital record undoubtedly helps the multidisciplinary experts collaborate for studies by experiencing a transparency in understanding of the subject, which further brings together newer probabilities in problem-solving and space-making concepts.

Contemporary design concepts experience success by bringing together experts from various fields and multidisciplinary studies such as color consultants with expertise in color psychology, an inter-disciplinary study of psychology and architecture, branched under space psychology. Many other subjects such as therapeutic architecture involving healing with spaces and more have seen the dawn of time after numerous research papers were published in a global scale. Such attempts in studies have gone beyond the subjective point of view in perceiving spaces to bring out the best quality of the spaces with a co-created concept belonging to multiple subjects. Architecture was thus able to transform visual perception.

“Architecture is a visual art and the buildings speak for themselves.” –Julia Morgan

Analogous to the above statement of the famous architect, architecture could be viewed as an extensive visual art and the buildings could speak better when their features are transcribed to take advantage of language and communication. 

Do you also believe that understanding a building before entering it could mould your experience as a user? If not, try reading about a building you haven’t visited and then go for a visit to feel the difference.