A Comparative Study about the Relationship between Man and Architecture from the Aesthetic Perspective in Classical, Modern and Post-modern Periods

Subject Areas : Architecture and urbanism

Somayeh Moosavian ¹

1 - Ph. D in Architecture, Department of Architecture, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran. *(Corresponding Author)

Received: 2019-01-20 Accepted : 2019-07-10 Published : 2023-03-21

Keywords: Western Architecture, Aesthetics, Bodily Perception, Man,

Abstract :

Background and Objective: The inseparable connection of man and architecture over different periods, either in the form of drawing a relative resemblance or analogy between the structure of the human body and architecture has always been considerable due to either aesthetic reasons or symbolic reasons. The author's attempt is to investigate the type of human-architectural relationship in classical, modern and postmodern periods based on similarities and differences. The aim pursued in this research is a comparative study of this relationship in the aforementioned periods, in order to achieve the cognitive relation between human and architecture from the perspective of the aesthetics. The main question is how western architecture has dealt with human as an aesthetic subject during different periods?Material and Methodology: This research is descriptive-analytical qualitative type, and in order to understand the place of man in the architectural aesthetics of different periods, it takes an interpretive point of view by using thematic literature, in a comparative method.Findings: The findings show that the general principles of aesthetics taken from the human body in classical architecture gradually became a complex process in subsequent periods.Discussion and Conclusion: It means, in the classical architecture, the implicit (metaphorical) and symbolic meaning of the aesthetics which was influenced by the human body. These concepts gradually faded to the onset of the modern period. The relationship between architecture and man from an aesthetic point of view in the classical period with an emphasis on its symbolic dimension, and in the modern period, emphasizing its pragmatic dimension, was a purely anatomical approach through mathematical logic. While this approach was transformed by the emergence of postmodernism into perceptional approach; hence, in postmodernism, emphasis is placed on human presence in architecture and cognizance through it, so this two-sided relationship of the body/architecture has come to the subject of "aesthetics experience" through physical perception in post-modernism architecture.

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