Architecture as Object

Definition

Goldberger's term for the dimension of architecture that presents itself as physical form in the world: mass and volume, shape, facade, materials, and the composition of their relations. "The physical reality of buildings, both great and ordinary, obliges us to think of them, first and foremost, as objects." He argues that this remains true despite the computer and virtual space: architecture is "buildings, not concepts," and must be "understood, experienced, and judged by the standards of built form in the physical world." The object is analyzed through (1) overall shape and the composition of shapes; (2) the facade as at once visual composition and public face; and (3) the object's relation to its neighbours. Working from the Lincoln Memorial's inversion of the Parthenon, the book's catalogue of shapes — circle, pyramid, sphere, obelisk, rectangle — shows both the power and the "Procrustean" danger of geometric form (the Hirshhorn's donut, the Luxor's pyramid), and it develops ordered surprise, the third-part composition of the Sullivan skyscraper, and the balance of facade-as-mass and facade-as-skin. Goldberger insists the object is never only an object: every building also has "a social and political, as well as a financial, reality" that cannot be ignored.

Key Thinkers

• Paul Goldberger — the account of the object across shape, facade, and composition.
• Louis Kahn — "The sun never knew how great it was until it hit the side of a building." (PAGE NEEDED — see log.)
• Henry Bacon — the Lincoln Memorial as a classical vocabulary turned "inside out." (PAGE NEEDED — see log.)
• Rudolf Arnheim and Steen Eiler Rasmussen — perception and balance. (PAGE NEEDED — see log.)

Related Concepts

• architecture-as-space — the companion dimension; the object encloses space.
• iconic-architecture — the object valorized as image and symbol.
• proportion — the measure of part to part and part to whole.
• ordered-surprise — the criterion of successful composition.
• architecture-as-media — what the object becomes when it circulates as image.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• source-notes/goldberger-2009-why-architecture-matters — ch. 3 (pp. 57–86) is the book's sustained treatment of architecture as object.

Open Questions

• If the object must also be judged by its social and political reality, when does aesthetic analysis of the object become a form of deference to power (Speer's Berlin)?
• Do parametric and digital practices dissolve the object's coherence, or simply add shapes to its repertoire?