denny Architectural Art & Design

Learn design with Doug Patt at his live virtual webcam studio. howtoarchitect.com Hi. I'm Doug Patt and this is So you want to be an architect, Part 4. What does an architect use? Aside from the wide variety of items an architect uses to physically create the drawings, specifications, models, and paperwork necessary to make buildings the architect uses elements of style to create buildings. Narrowed from a gamut of items I believe you could say the elements of style, when it comes to buildings are scale, form, complexity, and material. Lets look at examples of each. Much has been made throughout the history of art and architecture over proportion from DaVincis canon of proportions to Le Corbusiers modular man. How buildings reflect & accommodate human scale is a key component of architects work. From the beginning architects like Palladio used ratio and proportion found in nature to create harmonious buildings. From Frank Lloyd Wrights cozy interiors to the grand palace of Versailles. to the Hancock skyscraper of Boston who's scale overwhelms the famous trinity church but was designed to reflect it's beauty nonetheless building can be scaled to the human figure or scaled in a more ambiguous manner. Ambiguity is key for Jean Nouvels Arab world institute where the elements of the elevation make scale extraordinarily vague. So scale is one way architects relate a building to the user. In the last few decades architecture has increasingly been able to take advantage of ...