MODERN ARCHITECTURE & CONSTRUCTIONS

MODERN ARCHITECTURE : CONSTRUCTIONS

              When the proportions of architectural composition are applied to a particular building, the two termed relationship of the parts to the whole must be harmonized with a third term to the observer. He is not only sees the proportions of a door and their relationship to those of a wall as he would in a drawing of the building  but he measures them against his own dimensions. This relationship is called scale.
               It may be that the success of scale depends upon man's ability to comprehend proportions in relation to some unit or module that is roughly human sized and close enough to a person in a building to permit him to measure it against himself. found a unit of a size that can be grasped easily and one that is close to eye level as a person approaches the building. This module is a key to relationships among elements too far away to measure. This can be done in much larger buildings, too, where the elements close to the observer are too massive to be measured easily. as decoration partly for this reason, using them to break up huge masses into more comprehensible parts. In entirely different styles of architecture, construction, the single block can serve the same purpose. In frame construction, the bay distance between floors or columns or doors and windows may make a better key. The most successful modern skyscrapers retain a comprehensible scale, in spite of their size, by the repetition of some such module, and this is one reason why the skeleton is so often expressed on the exterior even when it is hidden behind walls.
              Light is a necessity for sight and, in architecture, a utility. But light is also a powerful, though ephemeral, vehicle of expression. Because it moves, changes character, and comes and goes with its source, light has the power to give to the inert mass of architecture the living quality of nature. The architect, though he does not quite control it, can predict its behavior well enough to catch its movements meaningfully. He channels it through openings into his spaces and molds it on the surfaces of his masses by changes of plane, making it enliven his forms by contrast with shadow.

           
The sunlight that falls on the exteriors of buildings cannot be directed or changed in quality, but it can be reflected or absorbed in a wide range of modulation by the relief and texture of surfaces. The planes and decoration of a facade, therefore, are not just the lines the architect makes on his working drawings but receptacles of light and shadow that change in character, even in form, as the Earth moves about the Sun.
             Because of this link between nature and art, an important part in the formation of local architectural styles is played by the variation in the quality and intensity of light in different climatic regions.The architect controls interior light better than exterior light, since he can select the position, size, and shape of its source. With glass and other transparent materials he transforms even its colour and intensity and so gives light a meaning independent of that which it imparts to the structure. One realizes this most powerfully in the Gothic cathedral, where the stained-glass windows transform the rays of the sun into a mystical diffusion that descends from above like a supernatural vision.
             Texture plays a dual role in architecture: it expresses something of the quality of materials, and it gives a particular quality to light. Although one absorbs both qualities simultaneously by eye, the first has tactile, the second visual associations.Specific tactile textures are peculiar to every material by virtue of its manufacture or natural composition, but they may be altered to produce a variety of expressive qualities. Any stone may be used in its natural, irregular state, or it may be chislled in a rough or smooth texture or highly polished to convey a range of meanings from vigour to refinement.