The Shape of Things that Work: The Fourth Architecture

The Shape of Things that Work: The Fourth Architecture

When architects create form, do they do so only for form’s sake, or to create form that is both beautiful and solves a fundamental challenge posed by its use – more comfort, better economy or operation, or perhaps a response to natural forces that requires no artificial or supplementary use of energy? If we only talk about how things look we are missing the point of practice – that we improve the quality of life for those who occupy the buildings we create and which make a permanent mark upon the landscape. That shapes should have useful purpose – as Louis Sullivan put it that “form follows function” is an argument as old as Western philosophy and the discourses of Socrates. Analyzing the fundamental forms of building – the wall, the roof, the window and the door – architect Curtis B Wayne examines shapes that work, and shapes that fail to work on terms other than being merely compositional. The challenge of integrating shapes that work presages a new architecture that is free from formal style, which Wayne terms "The Fourth Architecture." Examples of Fourth Architecture are analyzed and a direction for a more powerful and useful practice in the 21st century is imagined.