The Shape of Things that Work: The Fourth Architecture

By Curtis B. Wayne

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1490904557
• ISBN13: 9781490904559
• Release Date: July 2013
• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Length: 102 Pages
• Weight: 0.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 6.5" x 0.3" x 4.5"