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Form in architecture

...Our eyes are made to see forms in light; light and shade reveal these forms; cubes, cones, spheres, cylinder or pyramids are the great primary forms which light reveals to advantage; the image of these is distinct and tangible within us and without ambiguity. It is for this reason that these are beautiful forms, the most beautiful forms...[p.29]
Towards a New Architecture
Le Corbousier
In Modern architecture we have operated too long under the restrictions of unbending rectangular forms supposed to have grown out of the technical requirements of the frame and the mass-produced curtain wall. In contrasting Mies' and Johnson's Seagram Building with Kahn's project for an office tower in Philadelphia it can be seen that Mies and Johnson reject all contradictions of diagonal wind-bracing in favor of an expression of a rectilinear frame. Kahn once said that the Seagram Building was like a beautiful lady with hidden corsets. Kahn, in contrast, expresses the wind-bracing---but at the expense of such vertical elements as the elevator and, indeed of the space for people.[p.50]
Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture
Robert Venturi

Posted on:
2008.02.23 -0600

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