The Creative Gaze: Doxiadis' discovery

Abstract

This research uses vision as a methodological tool in order to highlight the relationship between vision and architecture as represented through Constantinos Doxiadis' dissertation which analyses architectural space in ancient Greece using a system of visual angles. This relationship designates Doxiadis' association with a broader philosophical environment of the European between-wars era where theories concerning the aesthetic dimension of vision are at the forefront. Doxiadis' dissertation as a characteristic paradigm of early modernism brings forth a certain conceptualisation of vision as an analytical and aesthetic tool used in architectural design. Nineteenth-century architectural theory advanced vision as the most important amongst other senses. Since Choisy's concept of the picturesque at the Acropolis there is a theoretical tradition about the way the observer understands architectural space through a series of successive perspective images. Architecture always deals with phenomena. Visual representation transfers the experience of the object when the actual object is absent.