Architecture

Architecture is the art and science of designing buildings and other physical structures. A wider definition often includes the design of the total built environment, from the macro-level of how a building integrates with its surrounding manmade landscape (see town planning, urban design, and landscape architecture) to the micro-level of architectural or construction details and, sometimes, furniture. The term "Architecture" is also used for the profession of providing architectural services.

Architects are primarily driven by the creative manipulation of mass, space, volume, texture, light, shadow, materials, program, and pragmatic elements such as cost, construction and technology, in order to achieve an end which is aesthetic, functional and often artistic. This distinguishes architecture from engineering design, which is driven primarily by the creative manipulation of materials and forms using mathematical and scientific principles.

Separate from the design process, architecture is also experienced through the senses, which therefore gives rise to aural, visual, olfactory, and tactile architecture. As people move through a space, architecture is experienced as a time sequence. Even though our culture considers architecture to be a visual experience, the other senses play a role in how we experience both natural and built environments. Attitudes towards the senses depend on culture. The design process and the sensory experience of a space are distinctly separate views, each with its own language and assumptions.

Architectural works are perceived as cultural and political symbols and works of art. Historical civilizations are often known primarily through their architectural achievements. Such buildings as the pyramids of Egypt and the Roman Coliseum are cultural symbols, and are an important link in public consciousness, even when scholars have discovered much about a past civilization through other means. Cities, regions and cultures continue to identify themselves with and are known by their architectural monuments

ВАРІАНТ II

The Architect

Architecture as a profession is the practice of providing architectural services. The practice of architecture includes the planning, designing and oversight of a building's construction by an architect. Architectural services typically address both feasibility and cost for the builder, as well as function and aesthetics for the user.

Architecture did not start to become professionalized until the late nineteenth century. Before then, architects had ateliers and architectural education varied, from a more formal training as at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in France, which was founded in the mid seventeenth century, to the more informal system where students worked in an atelier until they could become independent. There were also so-called gentlemen architects, which were architects with private means. This was a tradition particularly strong in England during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Lord Burlington, designer of Cheswick House, (1723-49) is an example. Some architects were also sculptors, such as Bernini, theater designers such as Filippo Juvarra and John Vanbrugh, and painters, such as Michelangelo and Le Corbusier.

In the 1440s, the Florentine architect, Albert, wrote his De Re Aedificatoria, published in 1485, a year before the first edition of Vitruvius, with which he was already familiar. Albert gives the earliest definition of the role of the architect. The architect is to be concerned firstly with the construction. This encompasses all the practical matters of site, of materials and their limitations and of human capability. The second concern is "articulation"; the building must work and must please and suit the needs of those who use it. The third concern of the architect is aesthetics, both of proportion and of ornament.

The role of the architect is constantly evolving, and is central to the design and implementation of the environments in which people live. In order to obtain the skills and knowledge required to design, plan and oversee a diverse range of projects, architects must go through extensive formal education, coupled with a requisite amount of professional practice.

The work of an architect is an interdisciplinary field, drawing upon mathematics, science, art, technology, social sciences, politics and history, and often governed by the architect's personal approach or philosophy. Vitruvius, the earliest known architectural theorist, states: "Architecture is a science, arising out of many other sciences, and adorned with much and varied learning: by the help of which a judgment is formed of those works which are the result of other arts." He adds that an architect should be well versed in other fields of learning such as music and astronomy. Vitruvius' broad definition of the architect still holds true to some extent today, even though business concerns and the computer have reshaped the activities and definition of the modern architect in significant ways.

ВАРІАНТ III