Major Update!

I have not updated for a long time and everything has changed and evolved since then. So much that i don't know where to begin.
I have a complete grasp of what beauty and the perception of beauty truly is, i've looked into theories by Pythagoras, Plato, darwin, evolution, God/Divine and through all periods in time dating back to 1.5 million years ago [these theories aren't necessarily theories on beauty it itself but on the ideas of perfection, happiness, good etc etc].
Thus i have finished compiling draft thesis for the research part, it is 28k words. I'm sitll missing the design, since the thesis did not imply anything to do with the actual design but was more a theoretical research.
I have also achieved a design which was viewed by Richard yesterday and he was pleased with it as a concept, but of course still much more to go. He gave me some very constructive criticisms. It is now 2 weeks from mid crit.

Realized the new difficulty in my thesis + design

I submitted my design proposal brief thing- i will update on it later but basically i'm going to create a transsitional place where one goes to discover them selves so they know what beauty is. As in, my thesis will contain all the theories and history of beauty, and it will end with the idea that, i can't tell you what beauty is, but i can show you; thus i create an architecture where one can go to figure it out for themselves. A timeless place where one can realise who they are and what they desire because i feel that whatever makes something truly beautiful is something that you lack or desire as an individual. However this would set my work into two parts, 1) defining beauty and what causes it and 2) making a place that lets you 'cause' that feeling of beauty. this means that i will have to also research into how to make a space that allows you to discover yourself- which is an entire thesis topic on its own- using architecture to find the inner self.
So unless i use the findings and research of the thesis to build a design, i'd have to do a lot of extra work. I should be using my research to design something not using the final solution of the thesis as the content of something.

Or i could perhaps actually use the findings of the thesis, for example why cave paintings were 'beautiful' and actually dedicate a space to cave paintings and make it in such a way that it allows the person to realise...something?!

Meeting 05 + Possible Museum design

Today's meeting focused on our designs. Richard said that there are many possible arrangments for my museum. It could be that it's spherical, that it has a rotating center where you stand in the middle and go into certain areas that surrounds. Or it could be a long corridoor that takes you through a confusing maze....and he said that perhaps the big idea in my design is that fighting for beauty is stupid, thus an architecture that conveys that emptiness through out it. He also asked about the form and the look of this building and he seemed happy with the idea that it takes no specific form, that it's different from every view, ambigious. However since that talk, i came up with another idea. Here is a part of my email to him:


AFter the research so far, i've discovered that beauty is constantly changing at the rate that we're changing, no matter if its artistic beauty, an act of human skill, natural, human figure beauty- it all depends on where the person or the human race is in time, it's usually whatever we lack, whatever we don't have, whatever that makes us curious, whatever makes us feel at peace- so it's all about contrast. [ the thesis writing would be to investigate this theory through the research on the types of beauty and the types of reasons for those beauty- so the design is like the solution rather than the 3D visualized version i previously said]

So Beauty is not  visual, it's when something embodies a quality. THe visual is for taking in the formatted image, and to recognize it as beautiful  means you are aware of yourself and what you need and who you are. [this is a good explaination for evolution's sexual selection 'theory' but also for things like why do we appreciate a well painted painting? If i know that i could also paint the exact same effect- would i still find it as beautiful?]

So i guess my point is that is that i need to create a place much like Weixin's isolated place- but instead of reconnecting to the sea, it's reconnecting to ourselves- for self awareness, to be taken away from this world into another where you are able to see all the images and challenge one's perception of who they may be- and only then will they be able to understand the reasons as to why they find certain things beautiful and understand what is beautiful.

So like i said today, i want to create a place where one could dwell imaginatively within another dimension or realm- a place one could go to feel a certain way about the world and to better understand it.  So what if i found a site where the buildings and other things on it displays the different types of beauty [human skill, artistic, natural, human faces...] then pull these spaces underground and while keeping them in a way that the person can recognize their real self above ground but stil change them to create the space i desire? So it's like using existing and physical places of beauty rather than creating them within the museum. Im intereted in underground because it's like a placelessness realm that doesn't belong to the surface yet it is an image of the things above. A contrasting theme which seems to be running through my research at the moment.

So i would create a place which takes no exterior form- at least none that the observor could tell and it's thus all about the experience. It doesn't really take place in the real world, at least not in the day-to-day visual world. I will leave it as that for now and wait for his reply. In the meantime i need to do my brief and search up more ideas of the self? so lost

Charles Darwinian theory of Beauty

Today i watched the Ted video about the idea of beauty being engraved into our minds. Denis Dutton argues that: beauty is not in the culturally conditioned eye of the beholder, it's deep in our minds. His ideas are that we must reverse engineer the Darwinian theories in order to understand the idea of beauty. He uses natural selection and sexual selection to describe it. 


he gave some interesting examples, such as that from 1.5 million years ago the homo erectus and the homo...sar..? turned their generic weapon tool into an art object. Acheulian hand axes
This axe was made for pure artisitic reasons and it helped the evolution in the sense that, who ever that could craft such beautifully symmetrical pieces had qualities that others did not- such as higher level of intelligence, skill, patience, fine motor control, planning abilities and so on, thus this resulted in higher reproduction chances than the less skilled- such as the nature of natural and sexual selection. 


Denis Dutton's speech is not without holes, while he sufficiently provided examples of the hard-wired ideas of beauty and evidentially disregarded the cultural conditioning influences, he did not take into consideration of the natural human traits, emotions and thus personalities. For example he argues that what we find beautiful is something that is skillfully and well done- this is true to some degree however it is also vague. When we find the Mona Lisa beautiful, it is indeed that we appreciate the virtuoso skill needed to create such a marvelous painting, however, beauty does not exist without contrast. If we were all able to paint the way mona lisa is painted, we would thus no longer find the original beautiful or anything special. This is because the Mona Lisa shows us nothing that we do not already have, however in reality, very little people can paint like that. When one finds the Mona LIsa beautiful, we are admiring a skill that we lack- we admire what the Mona Lisa embodies. Thus this goes back to my last week's reading of beauty being something we need to resemble. This is further supported by Dutton's example of the reproductivity of the skilled homo erectus craftsman. The women were attracted to him because he demonstrated a skill that others do not have- their natural instinct is to possess his abilities and thus she mates with him. [I'm just spitting this out of my head randomly so it's not without problems] My point is that it follows exactly what my last week's research argued for.

Dutton's example of the generic Suvanna Forest Landscape, he says that it is hardwired into out brains and thus people from all countries can appreciate and find it beautiful- even people who come from countries who do not actually have such landscapes natively finds this image beautiful- he may be right that this image is hardwired into our brains- though as with a lot of evolution-related theories like that, it's difficult to prove without substantial research. Anyway, the reason why we find these landscape beautiful may be because we've completely lost nature in our selves, we want the life that those landscapes my embody. If i lived in the place of these images, i surely would not celebrate it by putting it on my wall, i may put images of new york city streets on the wall. However, if i were to be taken away from such place, i would surely linger for it, wish for it and dream about it- such is the nature of being human.

i'm not trying to disregard his work or trying to say that my way is the way to look at the perception of beauty but that he didn't not counter everything- this is usually how we go about in our research, we forget multi-disciplinary!


For my thesis, i'm here to sow together all these ideas that emerge from all disciplines- and hope to come to the best possible conclusion. 

Meeting 04 Richard Goldie + Design proposal

I Did not meet with him last week, that's why there's no Meeting 03. 
In this weeks meeting, i elaborated on the subjectivity of beauty, what it means for people when they see beautiful houses and so on. [the idea of wanting to be something, to resemble or to claim something that one lacks] Richard was very pleased with my research, he said that i'm really on top of it and i hope to keep us this elvel of work and research.
He suggests that i now need to look at the science and history of it all [which i sort of already have] and tie it together to my current research. 
The problem now is that next week i have to have my design brief. That's not even plausible.  I don't know what to do, Richard is keen on the idea of a museum that exhibits beauty. BUt that sounds incredibly lame to me. What i wanted was a place that represents the ideal beauty for me- after doing small designs of ideal beauty for certain audience etc. ARGH!


Nevertheless, keywords for this weeks research derived from meeting:
- Science of perception
-Christopher Alexander
-Museum and beauty
-'Body memory architecture'


also
research why the golden ratio is no real- so that i can disregard it in my research.

Still trying to figure out what it is that i really want

I’m not trying to disregard Engineers or aesthetics or function, or form or anything, I’m trying to understand from a scientific and a logical perspective of how a person reacts to his surroundings, how he sees and interpret and inhabit his space so that I can understand what triggers emotions of happiness, comfort and total experience, which in my opinion, is beautiful architecture.

While writing notes and reading Architecture and Happiness, i had to write the above down to clarify for myself what it is that i'm trying to do and not trying to do. Assuming the above is well written and can sustain a wonderful thesis, what kind of product design would i end up with? Still feels like that on the way to explaining the above, i would have to produce a lot of research initiated design solutions to convince my reader, to show them. So stuck!

Neuroscience

Have finished my current neuroscience and architecture book. Unfortunately the information was quite limited.

From it i have basically learnt that while humans have a general blue print which determines their likes and dislikes, [for example humans are more sensitive to golden ratios] the environment and culture has a major impact on their growth [which is more or less obvious]. A person's experience and their value system[what they find more significant due to something which triggered attention at the time] determines someone's current perceptional views. These ideas were already obvious to me, however now i have scientific research to back it up.
So the key points were :
memory
Experience [derived from memory]
Conscious
Vision
Everything else really just follow the above three, even those three are very closely linked. I will not read more towards psychology, poetry and ideas that are less scientific and hopefully arrive at something.

I did not see Richard this week so i have no feedback.

I have decided to do some experiments to test some hypothesis regarding the human value system and sensory systems. Also decided that the final design requires more than text and pictures- after the book convincing me the lack of information in images as the brain requires all senses to form a real image for a real experience.

I will also start to collect more pictures, and read more thesis.

Week 3

need to read:
Poetry of space
neurology and architecture

print/research:
successful thesis ideas- people often have fascinating ways to document their progress

-start coming up with experiments after reading about neurology- beat W to it
-diagrams
-check for more talks
-Keep a physical folder for the talk each week to take with.

Meeting 02

In this meeting i elaborated on the book i currently finished : architecture inside out. [which i will write a blog review about so i can keep a list of books]


Richard:
- does not agree much with the architecture inside out book- the main issue of architects who do not pay enough attention to the functional and internal needs of the occupants.
- feel that there are two types of architecture, one that is built by demand and the other by mass production. 
- agrees with the issues of the body and seeing the body as both an object and a subject, that we are not bound by our skin.




for the design:
-he's fine with me having no clue as to where i want to build it, or what i want to build. 
-he suggested a museum of beauty, that beauty is the object in the museum to be shown- then there are rooms of certain beauty? 
-I suggested a selection of beautiful designs, because of the bigness of this subject, i said perhaps i could build a whole lot of things along the way, rather than one design.
-Perhaps i could design numerous random spaces and do three prototypes of each space, one that is viewed to be beautiful based on culture for example, then one based on purpely psychological then a joint one. 


key ideas that emerged:
Alvo Alto
Humanist branch of modernism
Architect's experience is different than that of a man down the street
existential senses
connecting the nodes of existence
POETRY
deconstructivist
TYPOLOGY OF BEAUTY

Meeting 01-response

In response to my current proposal [which won't be writtenly changed for a long time]
:
Thanks Brenda. I think your outline is good and will suffice for your submission today. I think we will need to very quickly start work on clarifying the issue of beauty. I think you should start immediately on an overview of ideas of beauty through the ages, restricting this to perhaps either the western or eastern traditions (otherwise there will be to much to handle). At the same time you need to start your research into the neurophysiology of beauty. In this way you may be able to track the development of beauty as both a cultural and scientific phenomenon. It may be an interesting insight that perhaps a scientific understanding of beauty is of course a cultural one too! (that is, science, and the belief in science being a cultural phenomenon/position?)


- Clarifying the issue of beauty
- Overview the ideas of beauty through the ages 
- Neurophysiology of beauty

Meeting with Richard Goldie 01 + New proposal

I met with Richard Goldie last thursday morning with Weixin and Joe. 
He was pleased with my proposal but suggested i clarify it. 
I think his main concern is how i plan to tackle such a big and old topic like beauty. I think i may be confusing myself. What i want to do is examine what makes people enjoy buildings- i used the word beauty because of it's vagueness and bigness.
He was displeased with weixins and very happy with Joes.
I'm really worried about my actual design project. it feels like everyone [including the thesis i read] had a very clear idea of what they wish to build then researched into how to build it successfully. I'm taking a route which is technically ideal [from how i understood Goldie]- it's not knowing what the outcome will be and suprising yourself through your research. But that's just risky.
He did say that site picking will be a very crucial part of the investigation...
The design and location of my thesis will be developed through understanding and revealing the topic.

From the first day I was introduced to Architecture I have denied the idea of aesthetics & the need for beautiful architecture, after seeing function and basic sustainability methods being sacrificed for aesthetics I began to lose hope in Architectural buildings. This thesis will challenge my long-term stubborn belief and access how the human brain identifies what 'beauty' is in architecture and how does a ‘beautiful’ architecture form impact our emotions and life. 

This thesis will

- investigate the individual ideas of 'beauty' as understood by numerous famous architects throughout time.

-explore the various intellectual and different cultural movements that inform how people create and look at architecture

-Attempt to understand neurology and psychology- determine how we, as humans, really identify the complex and personal concept of beauty.

Architecture is a multisensory art and requires to be understood on more than just visual terms, it must not only take into account of the other senses but also the effects of being human. Through an understanding of the neurology and psychology, I will attempt to use and manipulate the essence of being human, i.e. emotions, memory, compassion, personality & spirituality within architecture to create a personified, multisensory architectural form with the capacity to affect and reflect the deepest reaches of my existence. 

Critical Question of your thesis      Aesthetically successful architecture often follows certain rules of beauty which have been taught to us over time, but can architecture be challenged to evolve our emotional connections with our surroundings if we understood the neural basis that triggers feelings of appreciation, joy and happiness, i.e. ‘beautiful’ architectural spaces?

Major architectural and architectonic ideas you will be investigating

-        The impact of beautiful architecture on human (The importance of beautiful aesthetics )

-        How architecture speaks to us

-        The culture cause of our understanding and perception of ‘beauty’

-        The scientific cause of our understanding and perception of ‘beauty’

-        Individuality in the perception of architecture

-        How understanding psychology and neurology we are able to design ‘beautiful’ architecture and spaces for the unique individual

-        The definition of beauty

Books

Architecture, animal, human: the asymmetrical condition

 By Catherine Ingraham

The architect's brain: neuroscience, creativity, and architecture

 By Harry Francis Mallgrav

Brain landscape: 

the coexistance of neuroscience and architecture

Architecture: celebrating the past, designing the future

 By Nancy B. Solomon, American Institute of Architects

Have done no work

I have done no work in the past week. Kind of a break- i did read a lot more and spent more time than others [because i felt like i was more stuck]. However thinking about it now, i really should have used this time to read past thesis'! I guess i gave my self a break-

Tomorrow or the day after i will be meeting my supervisor and we will go over my proposal to refine it. I fear that it would be changed too much- Currently it seems that i have no design topic. I need him to help me on that. It would be so awesome if i did biomimicry- the design topic would be so easy! We will just wait and see i suppose. I'm a bit frantic. Need to read more!!! I'm so busy with other things!

Possible supervisors + Halt in my work

Something really big just happened and i don't think i will be able to do much work for the next...months. I'm a very determined and motivated person so i hope that when i come to work i can forget everything. I don't want to journal about what has happened because i want to keep this blog strictly thesis related. Lets just say that i have lost everything, my past my present and my future.


Possible Supervisors to research:
Graeme Burgess
Richard Goldie
Craig Moller
Aaron Paterson
Richard Reid

I will research these people later and hand in my proposal this evening. For now i will have to tend to my problems.

First things First- to do list

- Type up all the current notes in a logical format
- research into 'existence' what it means to be human
- list the ideas that needs to be researched assuming the previous post's idea is used.

Draft 1- proposal

It's rather difficult to come up with a perfect or near perfect abstract/intro to what i want to do when i've on read a few books, i only know so much, so i can only propose so much. I'm running out of time.


draft 1:


Keywords: beauty in architecture, aesthetics, personality, neurology, different famous architects, different times in architectural history, architecture impact on lives,


 How does the human brain identify what 'beauty' is in architecture and how can 'beautiful' architecture forms express  emotions or moods? 
Architecture is a multisensory art and requires to be understood on more than just visual terms, it must not only take into account of the other senses but also the effects of being human. [ie. emotions, memory, compassion, symapthy]


This thesis will investigate the individual ideas of 'beauty' as understood by numerous famous architects such as Zaha Hadid & Frank Gehry, explore the challeges to the various intellectual and cultural movements that inform how people create and look at architecture, then through neurology and psychology- determine how we, as humans really identify the complex and personal concept of beauty. 
Through this research, I hope to create an personified, multisensory architectural form with the capacity to affect the deepest reaches of my existence. 


hmm...O_O


The proposal seems a bit far fetched. I think i will go with that for now, i have become weary of all the reading, so i thought i'd 'put my foot down' so to speak and write something! I really hope that this can be used as a loose idea that we base our final idea on - [ the idea i hope to derive to WITH a supervisor]

Past thesis' : Total Immersion & Cities in the eyes of the Child

Yesterday i went to the library and read/flipped through two thesis. Both of Honors standard of course.


First one was called 'total immersion'. Fascinating thesis about the importance of the sense of self in architecture-  quite similar to what i want to do right? He started of explaining the importance of senses and so forth, very little research done in the sense that only 1/4 of the book was analyzing hypothetically and the rest was site study and analysis and so forth. 
Key points:
-In the beginning of the book, he did a self experiment based on something he read. He locked him self up in total darkness for 5 hours and explained his feelings during that time. [the main idea of his thesis revolves around shadows] He talked about at the end of the experiment how the only thing he could visualize is him in his sitting position, he lost the touch of space and therefore time. Complete sense of self.
-He ended the thesis based on a narrative walkthrough of his design where he guides you through the building and writes what you see and what you feel as you progress through. It is very similar style to the starting experiement of the book, except this experience is for the reader. By doing this he is able to describe his design exactly how he wanted it to be and feel, rather than telling you what is supposed to be here and there through images and diagrams, he tells you that you are feeling it and seeing it. Naturally it is well written so you feel that you have gone through his building with the exact experience he planned for you. He was able to successfully encapture you in a world where it supports his proposal fully.
-Very short thesis, very straight forward, simple yet fully supported arguments and resolved issues.
-The entire design of the thesis and pages reflected his ideas. The hard cover of the book had cut out words which fully engages his idea of the shadow and sensory stuff.. [yes i'm tired]

obviously was much nicer that it is in this photo. It was so glossy that i kept thinking the back plastic was mirrored because the light that goes through the gapped letters is so bright on the glossy back background that it was bright silver. I was fascinated by the cover for a long time trying to figure out what was going on. PERFECT

Paper used felt really good on the fingers. Thick & rough matte, sorta felt like handmade paper. Slightly cream. All very emotive, triggers all senses.

abstract. I don't know how much of a part the rhythm of nature played in his design. Kinda felt added on to suit it's context [viaduct]

The second thesis i read was called "cities in the eyes of the child"
-It started of as an analysis of the current childcare facilities and statistics 
-Somehow reasoned the need of childcare places in the city is for the adult to reconnect or something, something about using children as a medium
-built and examined several prototypes of what he wanted to create for the mid city- fully investigated each prototype and improved until the final design was produced. This is what i liked the most about his thesis. 
His thesis was a little hard to read as it was clearly formatted with photoshop and therefore the text was not crisp and clear. It was very collected, calm and well organised like the previous thesis. But clearly that didn't loose him many points.

I still need to read many more, I don't have time to thoroughly read each thesis yet as i'm simply looking for a topic and trying to understand what a thesis is. [For example i now know i definitely need to make a building and most likely need a real site!] I will go through more and learn the perks of each :)

Random books to read- and hopefully be inspired by

Architecture Without Architects: A Short Introduction to Non-Pedigreed Architecture

The Elements of Style

William Strunk, Jr.

Stick with....stick WITHOUT biomimicry

When i thought about it, [more like read a little more] biomimicry is just too broad of a topic for me to include as a conclusion or as a solution to my proposal. While i believe my first proposal in the previous post is very logical and if written well can be really successful, it's just a) too much of a task b) not suitable for a thesis topic.
I would have to explain way to much to get to my point, not to mention i'd have to be making something of it at the end. Biomimicry itself is a controversial topic which opens it's doors to a large range of topics, simply stating biomimicry will solve my issue would mean that i would have to very briefly touch on biomimcry and if done wrong it may seem rather rushed..


I'm decided to stick with: [keywords]
Beauty, aesthetics, neurology..
understanding how we perceive beauty and whether or not it is universal, how do we design for the PEOPLE rather than for other architects and artists....and so forth.


My hatred in architecture grew when i felt that we had to work within a certain framework of beauty for our work to be accepted. The whole beauty contest idea of architecture school put me off greatly and i suppose here is my chance to write about it. I admit that i'd be able to write a much more conclusive argument if i were to talk about sustainability but i always assume i can handle more than my capabilities allow.

Thesis topics

Still stuck on topics at the moment. I want to write about aesthetics, it's impact on human, but i also want to do something MORE, more real and more practical- which would be sustainability.

So i wanted to connect the two:

Problem: A doom future of peak oil and resource depletion- architecture is only responding to either aesthetics or sustainability at the moment

Therefore: Understand what is BEAUTIFUL in architecture through neurology, how do we see beauty

Final solution: Biomimicry can link beauty/aesthetics to sustainability/function without sacrificing either one for the other. Once we understand what we find beautiful in architecture, biomimicry will answer aesthetics when only attempting sustainability.

So the problem with this is that it touches on too many ideas: Future, neurology, biomimicry, aesthetics vs function. While they're all interlinked, i don't know if i can successfully convince the reader of each element.

The sample thesis i read was simply on 'what makes great architecture' answer: 'the architect, not how the architecture fits into a specific framwork', solution 'create architecture which is best fit for the author'...of course it was written a lot better than that but with such a simplistic proposal, he was able to write sooo much.

Perhaps i should forget the sustainable element- afterall i'm only including it out of hatred towards the lameness of architecture theories.

Second proposal possibility:

Quesiton: What is a beautiful building? What makes it beautiful and successful?

Proposal: Understand beauty through neurology and realise that beauty is subjective, we appreciate architecture depending on our own experiences..

Therefore: 'beautiful' architecture is not subject to aesthetics or function, it's the expression and emotions the building gives out..?!

Final solution: ...?

Or perhaps i could simplify the first proposal so that it does not touch on the future....

Problem/problem: Aesthetics or sustainability? Often new architecture today sacrifices one for the other, having an architecture fit in often proves it self more useful for the architect than a fully sustainable building,

Therefore: Understand what is BEAUTIFUL in architecture through neurology, how do we see beauty? is beauty really limited to aesthetics?

Final solution: Beauty is how the building speaks to us...emotions bla bla. How do we approach the future of architecture? Through biomimicry....create a biometrics architecture which supports the previous ideas proved through neurology and yet opens the door to many new possibilities.

So i need to read more books, feeling very shaky about the whole biomimicry thing, what if i can't find a strong link of the two?

READ
-biomimicry, biometric,

-aesthetics of architecture, beautiful architecture

-Architecture future..

-More thesis