Lecture 03 | toad

Between Honesty architecture and Deceive Architecture, which would you choose? Honesty architecture, expose of raw material so that the building material would be appreciated. Deceive architecture, so that the effort to beautify the interior and exterior of building due to the defection of raw material would be appreciated.

But, since when and why there is existence of deceive architecture? Isn’t that adding another layer of covering on top of the raw material itself is more energy, effort and time consuming? The appearance the deceive architecture is that really just because of aesthetic? Its level of aesthetic is beyond Honesty architecture?

The contributions were made during Ancient Rome are very important to the architecture. For example, cements and bricks, and also the most important one, the aqueducts system. Then, in 17th century, the invention of electricity, and followed by the other services, architect started need to take all the water piping, wiring and etc. in consideration when making a building. One of the best solution of hiding all these piping and wiring, is to conceal them under the cement and plaster. It is easy and save cost. The reason why all these has to be conceal under another type of building material, is same as why ladies putting make-up on their faces, concealing their freckle and wrinkles -to conceal the imperfection, to present the perfection.

The beauty of honest architecture no doubt is recognized by the society. And that’s the reason why The Great Pyramid of Giza, The Great Wall, and Temple of Artemis etc. are in the list of The 7 Wonders of the World. In the ancient society, they appreciate every single construction material that was used. They tried their best to beatify and present it to the public. Every single column and beam, wall and roof, door and window in the ancient building recorded the culture in the particular era at the particular area. This witnesses our ancestor dedication and persistence toward architecture. In the era that without any existence and assistance of mechanical and electrical, the artist, the architect and the graver still insist on presenting the best of the raw material to the people.

HONESTY & DECEIVE

When there is another option where we are allowed to add on another layer of building material to cover the raw material, the standard workmanship that we need to achieve on the raw material can be decline. And so this allow the duration of construction can be shorted. That’s one of the reason why deceive architecture is more popular today.

However, the beauty of the raw material cant be ignore. Especially the effort of ancient people put onto the decoration part on the raw material.

During the 17th century, industrial revolution occurs, what the society wants is all about speed. Speed of production, speed of construction, speed of earning, speed of development. Construction time need to be shortened to follow the trend of the world. Most of the developer wanted to minimize their project construction time, therefore, the skill of mechanism and electrical get involve to the architecture field successfully. Speed is required, when man is talking about speed, that’s mean productivity (of construction material) must be high, when we want a high productivity, things need to be standardize.

When things are produce follow the standard that fixed, the term ‘iconic’, ‘special’ need to be scarified. But it is not about the iconic of a building has to be sacrificed, but the small architecture element of the building has to be sacrificed, e.g, openings, beams and columns.