Architectural Intention

Definition

Architectural intention is Goldberger's threshold criterion for architecture: a building becomes architecture when its making includes the awareness that it does something beyond the practical. "Art is defined largely by intention, and so is architecture." On this account virtually every building is architecture "so long as its physical form reflects some degree of civilizing intent," whether that intent is a tenement cornice or the "ineffable" space of a Baroque church, and the intent may be expressed through decoration, space, form, or the juxtaposition of materials. The criterion is deliberately inclusive and is used to dismantle sir Nikolaus Pevsner's distinction between "Architecture with a capital 'A'" and "mere building": if the tenement was "designed to be more than merely practical," then it is architecture, and the vernacular and commercial landscape of the suburb and strip cannot be excluded from the field. Goldberger couples the criterion with a warning: intentions "have given birth to more bad architecture than good," so they are necessary but not sufficient.

Key Thinkers

• Paul Goldberger — proposes intention as the operative definition, against the masterwork canon and Pevsner's high/low distinction.
• John Summerson — the historian whose recovery of the salaried, "bread-and-butter" architect parallels Goldberger's inclusiveness within criticism.
• Robert Venturi — complexity and contradiction as an argument for architectural richness against doctrinaire simplicity.

Related Concepts

• everyday-architecture — the register that intention-as-threshold legitimizes.
• commodity-firmness-and-delight — the Vitruvian triad within which intention must operate.
• architecture-as-object — the physical vehicle through which intention becomes visible.
• vernacular-architecture — the theme that Goldberger's threshold criterion opens to aesthetic analysis.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• source-notes/goldberger-2009-why-architecture-matters — ch. 1 defines architecture by intention ("designed to be more than merely practical") and refuses the bicycle-shed/cathedral divide.

Open Questions

• Can intention really be read off a building, or is it always reconstructed by the critic after the fact — and if so, is intention a property of the object or of the beholder?
• If intention is the threshold, whose intention counts: the architect's, the client's, the builder's, or the culture's?