Manifesto of Dialectical Architecture

Юрий Погудин Manifesto of Dialectical Architecture

1. Architecture has overcome a huge path in history and is entering new frontiers. The XXI century is known for a tsunami of architectural forms — such multifarious that it has become difficult to distinguish what is beautiful from spectacular, what is nobler — from the interesting. Already at the origins of modern architecture — a century ago — this led to the devalvation of the concept of beauty. But in its meaning, this concept has not disappeared. Without calling beauty beauty, every modern artist/designer/architect is looking for a form that is both meaningful and beautiful — in accordance with his creative credo.

2. The modern world is once again torn apart by spiritual and territorial contradictions. The spiritual identity of peoples and civilizations is not and should not be a uniform monolith. Just as every person has his own life path — his destiny, so every nation and every country has its own destiny.

3. Art and architecture are those areas of creativity where people with different worldviews can be united in understanding and feeling beauty.

4. Many previous creative and architectural manifestos are characterized by negativism — as a negation of the previous major style. Thus, modernism devalues the classics (remaining connected with it in a sense of proportions), and parametrism — modernism. Dialectical architecture considers the history of forms and the meanings behind them as a struggle and unity of opposites. In achieving such unity, synthesis becomes the key category.

5. In determining the criteria for a new architectural beauty, we can rely on the theory of dialectical synthesis of opposites. Dialectical synthesis is not only a well-known synthesis of the arts. This is a direct form-building synthesis of the opposites of the entire aesthetic range of the architect's creator's tools, given as a real geometric morphogenesis of an architectural composition in the expressive form of an expedient space.

6. The principle of synthesis as the principle of generating new categories from different and opposite phenomena and properties can be taken by practical architects into the arsenal of means of searching for new expressive compositions. The dialectical method has the potential to become key in the future development of general and applied theories of creativity and composition. Architecture on this path is a powerful source of inspiration and creativity.

7. The theoretical task of dialectical architecture is to identify the patterns of morphogenesis throughout the history of architecture in terms of splitting and synthesis of semantic and form-building ideas, and apply these results for a new creative step.

8. The practical task of dialectical architecture is to move away from only the irrational, only spontaneous and only intuitive morphogenesis of an architectural position, and the synergy of the spontaneous and rational in order to achieve balance and harmony.

9. Any category of geometry, starting from a point, is at the same time an abstract mathematical concept, a verbal logical one, and a visual one. If the visual image of an octagon is some combination of images of a square and a circle, then it is simultaneously beautiful in both respects — both logical and visual. If the dialectical construction shows the movement of categories and beauty in their semantic morphogenesis, then both visual and material geometry will be a cast, reflection and expression of this movement and this beauty. The geometric concept becomes the point of intersection of logic and aesthetics.

10. If at the logical — geometric level we dialectically combine concepts, and our mind perceives this connection as logical, integral and therefore beautiful, then at the visual-geometric and material — architectural level it will be artistically logical, integral and beautiful.

11. Geometric architectural form is capable of expressing concrete mythological and abstract verbal meanings, internal energies and co-existence of the human soul. Three — dimensional forms can be expressive sculptures of verbal and emotional, intellectual and heartfelt semantic beliefs of a person.

12. The dialectical principle of architectural composition is not to create different things from the same type, but to create the whole from different and opposite ones. The composition then becomes not the overcoming of the monotony of standardization, but the completeness of the combination (synthesis) of heterogeneous forms into a single whole.

13. The method of architectural shaping based on the dialectical triad ensures the connection of the parts of the composition into a logical whole, consciously or unconsciously read at the visual level as a special consistency and expressiveness of the form. The spontaneous form-building stream, structured by the counterpoint of dialectical logic, reaches the level of a logically constructed striking three-dimensional form.