I was revisiting this excellent introduction to architecture today to compare it with F.L. Wright’s essays . One of my favorite things about architecture is how it marries mathematics and logic with art and humanity. But it wasn’t always this way. Botton writes:

“The principles of engineering may have brutally contradicted those of architecture, but a vocal minority of nineteenth-century architects nevertheless perceived that the engineers were capable of providing them with a critical key to their salvation — for what these men had, and they so sorely lacked, was certainty. The engineers had landed on an apparently impregnable method of evaluating the wisdom of a design: they felt confidently able to declare that a structure was correct and honest in so far as it performed its mechanical functions efficiently; and false and immoral in so far as it was burdened with non-supporting pillars, decorative statues, frescos or carvings.”

-Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness

This idea of simplification by reducing beauty and utility into the same structures is fascinating to me. In my last post I quoted Wright speaking about “useful things” and I think this is what he was talking about.

I often times find myself considering the similarities between architecture and web design. Both mediums are interactive, permeable, and require the marriage of style and function. I wonder who I am, the architect or the engineer? The graphic artist or the developer? Great designers are both.