Architectural Taste Research Articles

Would you rather live in the gray or pink building? Acceptance of colored façades of apartment blocks among architects and laypersons and their relationship to cultural capital

Pastelosis is a phenomenon that originated in Poland in the 1990s as a reaction to the gray color of modernist settlements that dominated communist urban spaces. This is manifested in changing the building façades through the introduction of pastel colors and their compositions. Critics of pastelosis attribute its popularity to the low level of architectural taste among the Polish population. Liking pink, orange, or blue elevations would thus be a sign of low cultural capital and of the lack of aesthetic training. The study seeks to investigate (1) acceptance of different levels of pastelosis, (2) whether acceptance of pastelosis differentiates laypersons and experts (people with training in architecture), and (3) whether attitudes toward elevations differing in the level of pastelosis are related to cultural capital (institutional, material, and embodied).In two online experiments, participants (Study 1: N = 572, including 252 experts, Study 2: N = 507, including 171 experts) evaluated four different façades differing in color (gray, pastelosis, medium pastelosis, and antipastelosis), and were tested with respect to various measures of cultural capital and socio-demographics. Elevations with pastel colors were generally preferred to traditional gray colors. Experts were more critical of all changes than were the laypersons. More consistent relations between cultural capital and evaluations of facades were found for low than high cultural capital. Popular tastes were consistently positively associated with acceptance of pastel colors on buildings’ elevations, whereas the relationship between high cultural capital and evaluations of facades depended on the type of cultural capital and was less pronounced.This study adds to the existing research on cultural capital, extending it to architectural tastes.

Architectural Taste: Shaping Aesthetics, Embracing Multisensory Experiences, and Navigating Cultural Influences

This paper explores the intricate relationship between architecture and taste, focusing on mechanisms that enable architecture to enhance aesthetic preferences and sensory experiences. It delves into the impact of architecture on taste through the education of public taste, the development of interactive models, and the establishment of an architectonic language of communication. These mechanisms serve as vehicles to broaden public appreciation, deepen individual understanding, and personalize architectural aesthetics. The research investigates the potential for architecture to extend beyond the visual by integrating touch, taste, and smell, providing a more inclusive, multisensory experience. It examines how digital modeling, 3D printing, and edible materials can be utilized to season and flavor the built environment, making it uniquely immersive and responsive to personal taste. Furthermore, the study acknowledges the influence of socio-cultural and economic factors on architectural preferences and the importance of catering to diverse tastes. Employing qualitative methods, this research contributes insights from discussions that reveal the evolving nature of architecture's role in shaping taste. Findings underscore architecture's capacity to evolve as a medium for cultural expression, fostering inclusivity, emotional resonance, and dynamic adaptation in the built environment. These insights offer valuable perspectives for architects, designers, and policymakers as they strive to create spaces that reflect the diverse tastes and preferences of society

A Connection Through Stucco Technique with Early Medieval Natural Lighting Systems in Rome and Emphasis on the Role of Light in Islamic Architecture Focusing on Khirbat al-Mafiar 7CE.

This article investigates how, since ancient times, building windows have had grids of stucco, stone, wood, or iron, as well as slabs of glass or other materials. They also appeared as simple apertures in the wall, the arrangement of which frequently served decorative functions. Following a classical tradition, the usage of shuttered windows with glass fixed on timber frames was known in late antiquity. The search for a peculiar architectural taste of the late antique and early mediaeval times is particularly appealing due to the light effects produced by shuttered windows made of translucent material, which provides a mystical and suggestive appearance.
 The light that transforms the decoration, using color combinations, sometimes occur in unexpected contexts or in an adjacent architectural form, such as the floor and vault of the royal apse in the bathroom of Khirbat al-Mafjar. The architectural element that includes the lozenges, closer to Khirbat al-Mafjar as a drawing and scheme, to create a particular visual effect, could be seen in three barriers of stucco windows found in situ in the windows of the central nave during the 1930 restorations to Bovino Cathedral. Presence of light during history and in various architectural oeuvres, in addition to functional aspect, as factor for illumination and life conferring to daily activities, it has been abundantly addressed from spiritual aspect and in doctrinal discussions of religions.

Musical preferences correlate architectural tastes: preference correlations between architectural material features and musical instruments

ABSTRACT This study explores correlations between personal preferences for musical instruments and architectural materials. Specifically, it determines whether preferences for 12 musical instruments or their instrument families may reflect a preference tendency in architectural material features pertaining to colour, quality, texture, and reflection. First, a survey gathered individual appreciations of the attributes. After carefully distinguishing the valid responses, Pearson’s correlation coefficient analysis revealed attribute preference correlations within different demographic classes, and Bonferroni correction screened the most reliable ones. The outcomes show different correlation trends across ages and genders, and once again confirm their importance in the preference correlations. Attributes related to material colour and quality reflected a higher number of correlations with musical instrument timber preferences, and thus have more potential to reflect the satisfactory attributes in another field. Several correlations were also discovered, thereby confirming the existence and potential uses of the preference correlations between musical instruments and architectural materials.

A promenade at Lepcis Magna: Experiencing buildings from the Augustan to the Antonine era

AbstractThis article investigates the visibility of public edifices at Lepcis Magna (Lebdah, Libya) and how people in antiquity approached, lived, and experienced them. It engages with the buildings’ layout, architectural and sculptural ornamentation, and epigraphic apparatuses, looking at the transformations of the cityscape from Augustus to the Antonine era. The analysis highlights the importance of private and public patronage and how social status was showcased through the monumentality and visibility of new constructions in an evolving urban environment. Buildings and their ornament drew upon a range of architectural and decorative models: influences from the centre of Empire and the Mediterranean world, long-lasting Hellenistic traditions, as well as North African and locally created, or reinterpreted, motifs that contributed to shaping the Lepcitanian architectural taste.

ARCHITECTURAL TASTE AS AN ARCHITECTURAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PHENOMENON, ITS FACTORS AND ROLE IN THE ARCHITECTURAL EDUCATION AND PRACTICE

The article presents the results of a theoretical study of architectural taste as an architectural and psychological phenomenon, its factors and role in architectural education and practice. The peculiarity of architectural taste is facilitated by gustosology – complex science about aesthetic taste, its nature, peculiarities of formation and function in public life, role in the development of the general culture of personality and society generally. It is determined that architectural taste is an aesthetic pleasure derived from individual patterns of architecture preferences, which has an intellectual character, associated with the result of reasoning, sequence of evaluation and quick judgement, through which a non-trivial result is achieved by the proportionality of beauty. It was established that according to the theoretical research, the differences of architectural taste depend on factors: 1) professional and artistic (inherent to specialists – architects, designers and depends on the level of education and culture of a particular person); 2) sexual (for example, female tastes are more emotionally colored, more sensitive; they are mainly found in the design of the interiors of buildings); 3) national (hence – English, French taste); 4) ethnographic (for example, Hutsul style); 5) social (belonging to the noble family); 6) own and borrowed tastes (unification of tastes under the influence of fashion); 7) ecological (reflectses human’s attitude to the preservation and development of the eco-system); 8) educational (the study of tastes concerns the process of their formation in educational institutions); 9) physiological (perception of architecture); 10) psychological (temperament; psychological types of people by K. G. Jung according to the types of drawings of architectural objects (by Vinogradova E. I. and Barabanov A. A.). It is confirmed that architectural taste is formed throughout the life, and therefore may change. The results of the research are valuable for: theories of architecture; architectural education – for better understanding of students-architects by teachers of higher education institutions; for architectural practice in the field of urbanism and urban planning, as well as in work with customers; for the further experimental research, in particular, the identification of typology of architectural tastes of individuals and their psychological characteristics, which will be presented in the next publications of the author.

From encyclopaedia to magazine: the Loudons, the public, and the architect in 1830s Britain

John C. Loudon and Jane Webb Loudon formed one of the most productive publishing alliances in the fields of gardening, botany, and architecture in early nineteenth-century Britain. They employed a range of genres with particular skill, such as the encyclopaedia, the magazine, and the manual. Between 1834 and 1838, they produced the first British architectural magazine — then still a young genre. They strove to improve architectural taste among anyone involved with architecture: from the builder, student, and architect to the client and occupier, including women. This article examines the shortlived Architectural Magazine and the claim that its inclusive approach documented a brief period of architectural democratisation during the 1830s, before the exclusionary tendencies of professionalisation and institutionalisation took hold. Who made up the early architectural magazine’s ‘public’, and in which ways can Loudon’s approach indeed be called ‘democratic’? To address such questions, this article considers the Architectural Magazine as a successor to Loudon’s Encyclopaedia of Cottage, Farm, and Villa Architecture. It explores the networks of readers and authors established by the Loudons, and the relationship between the public and the emerging architectural profession, in light of contemporary aesthetic and political theory.

Musical Preferences Correlate Architectural Tastes: An Initial Investigation of the Correlations Between the Preferred Attributes

Despite a large number of discussions on the analogical and technical interrelations between architecture and music, very few studies have looked at the interrelations between the appreciations of the attributes among them. This study investigates the correlations between the preferences of architectural and musical attributes to reflect how they generally interrelate with each other. The considered visual qualities related to architectural forms are symmetricity, complexity, rhythm, pattern, and stress; and the considered musical attributes are related to the main four categories of Genres, perceived psychological attributes, five factors of music, and 3-Factors (arousal, valence, and depth). To discover the correlations, at first, a survey was designed to gather individual appreciations of the attributes. The responses were then filtered to remove the invalid ones before Pearson’s correlation coefficient analysis unveils the relationships between every single considered attribute. In total, 5,184 correlations have been thoroughly explored, and a number of strong correlations were discovered and discussed in a classified manner; for instance, rap-followers showed higher satisfaction to asymmetrical building façade. This study also confirms some musical attributes are stronger reflectors of architectural taste, like rap, jazz, sophisticated, poetic music. Lastly, this paper confirms the significant effects of demographic attributes on the discovered correlations.

The Evolution of Ottoman Architecture and its Distinct Characteristics

Architecture reflects and pinpoints its nation’s progress and mindset. Ottoman Empire, which ruled over three continents, is known for its unique and magnificent architecture represented by grand mosques, seminaries and imperial palaces .The so called Ottoman Architecture was created with in the domain of the Ottoman Empire and is known for its distinct characteristics. This architecture was initially influenced by Seljuk architecture. All Ottoman Sultans had special taste for architecture .Later on, the center was shifted to the capital of the fallen Byzantine Empire, and thus got inspirations from byzantine art .The most well۔known architect of that era was Sinan who revolutionized the art of architecture. He designed almost three hundred buildings distinguished for spacious courtyards surrounded by vast gardens. In the 18th century, Ottoman Sultanate came into contact with Europe, and therefore Baroque influences came to be seen in their architecture. Hence, internal decorations became prominent in the architecture.

De Goa a Cabul

Com uma obra enquadrada nas primeiras décadas do século XIX, e uma vida movimentada e aventurosa, circulando de Goa a Bombaim e até ao Afeganistão, José Maria Gonsalves emerge como uma figura emblemática, não apenas na história de Goa, como também na conjuntura cultural e sociopolítica da Índia Inglesa. O seu interesse pelos diversos aspectos dos usos e costumes, a par de um gosto pela arquitectura, onde é notória uma clara tendência para a valorização dos pormenores e detalhes, tornam os seus desenhos e pinturas documentos incontornáveis para o conhecimento da arte indo-portuguesa como da história da presença portuguesa no Oriente sendo a sua obra presença indispensável nas grandes exposições internacionais que tem sido realizadas ao longo das últimas décadas. Igualmente as suas litografias, particularmente as de Bombaim, são uma referência académica fundamental para o estudo da arquitectura e desenvolvimento urbano desta cidade na primeira metade do século XIX

“Breathtakingly ugly”: advertising taste in 1970s domestic interiors

Frequently featuring avocado tapered curtains and vinyl wallpaper, the domestic interiors of the 1970s are now considered remnants of ?the decade that taste forgot.? This paper beckons to ask under what conditions domestic architectural taste was rendered within this abundantly decorated era. An interdisciplinary study of design, history, and advertising is enabled through a semiotic reading of an advertisement that is guided by the sociological research by Pierre Bourdieu. The effort to contextualize the role of domestic architectural taste in 1970s is found upon developing domestic interiors as advertised vehicles of upward mobility that showcased taste as a constructed object that is sutured with signs of cultural capital.

Урал романтический и готический в травелоге Т. У. Аткинсона

The aim of this article is to show how the image of the Urals is created in T. W. Atkinson’s (1799–1861) travelogue Oriental and Western Siberia: a Narrative of Seven Years’ Explorations and Adventures in Siberia, Mongolia, the Kirghis Steppes, Chinese Tartary, and Part of Central Asia (1858). Despite the practical purposes of this journey, the travelogue is first of all a literary work without chronology. An artist and architect, Atkinson was one of the adepts of the European Gothic Revival of the 19 th century, cultivating Neogothic and Romantic visual and verbal sensibility. First nine chapters of the book are about factories (“zavod”) and scenery of the Urals. Visiting iron, gold, lapidary, armory factories one by one or sailing down the Chusovaya river, Atkinson not only describes the technologies but also examines the neighborhood, especially mountains dominating the terrain, and sketches the most picturesque scenery. He is interested in everything that is considered in English preromanticism and romanticism to be “picturesque”: wild, interminable, striking, broken, rugged etc. The traveler shows Gothic and Romantic taste for the sublime, grand, great, various and irregular in Nature. He prefers to describe high cliffs, steep banks, deep gorges, impenetrable forests, snowstorms and thunderstorms. In the Urals, Atkinson is primarily fascinated by the variety of different kinds of stones, precious stones, minerals, both in terms of practical use and esthetics. In the shattered mountains of the Urals, he discovers caverns and “geological” ruins. His Gothic architectural taste is focused on the “perpendicular style” of the Ural mountains – highly elevated rugged crags, summits of “great height”. A set of his tropes reveals some influence of the Gothic architectural style in such details as “buttresses”, “towers”, “pinnacles”.

From du Cerceau to du Cerceau: Scottish Aristocratic Architectural Taste, c.1570–c.1750

The 1990 exhibition curated by Charles McKean and Deborah Howard was the decisive victory in a war waged for a century between those arguing that French influence was pervasive in the elite architecture of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Scotland and those claiming it was overwhelmingly a home-grown phenomenon.1 This, together with Charles's subsequent publications and especially The Scottish Chateau, demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that there was extensive French influence.2 This article extends this debate by focusing on the influence of the printed pattern books of Jacques Androuet du Cerceau (fl. c.1545–c.1585) on one house, Careston Castle, five miles west of Brechin in Angus, and goes on to suggest that their influence pervaded Scottish architecture much more widely than hitherto realised, only fading after 1745.3

Review: Saint Louis

Saint Louis Conciergerie, Paris (organized by the Centre des Monuments Nationaux) 8 October 2014–11 January, 2015 Even among the colorful panoply of great medieval rulers, very few can match the legacy and regal charisma of Louis IX (1226–70). Admired and imitated by his contemporaries and successors in France and the courts of Europe, Louis seemed to epitomize the quintessential but often unattainable qualities of a Christian monarch in the High Middle Ages: he was a courtly and just ruler who consolidated his kingdom, a chivalric crusader, a devout and sophisticated patron, and, ultimately, a saint. The irresistible glamour of Louis IX’s reign not only attached itself to the king but also permeated the entire court and especially its seat, the city of Paris and the Ile-de-France. The dazzling quality of art produced in France in this period and the shift in architectural tastes to a particularly refined Gothic style known as Rayonnant inspired Robert Branner (editor of the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians from 1964 to 1966) to introduce the term “court style” as a way of linking artistic innovations to royal projects, thereby unleashing decades of art historical debate.1 In Louis IX, art history has found an enlightened patron who not only defined thirteenth-century France but, through the dissemination of the Rayonnant style, also determined the course of European medieval architecture in the following century. It is thus fitting that the …

Visões do gosto arquitetônico passadista: problematizando o "estilo neoclássico" de São Paulo em perspectiva internacional

Em vista de uma pesquisa mais ampla sobre os condicionantes socioculturais da proliferação dos edifícios ditos "neoclássicos" na arquitetura de apartamentos de São Paulo, este artigo discute diferentes abordagens do que se poderia chamar de gosto arquitetônico passadista. O balanço bibliográfico resultante apresenta uma literatura produzida especialmente na Europa e nos Estados Unidos a partir do último quartel do século XX, período em que o questionamento da estética moderna do despojamento e a volta dos ornamentos e da linguagem historicista tornam-se evidentes na cena arquitetônica internacional.

"Internacionalni" stil arhitekture u Japanu tridesetih godina - vernakularnost i monumentalnost

After mastering Western architecture in the 1910s, Japanese top architects have been confronted with two problems: creating their own style based on Japanese traditions and climatic or seismological conditions and educating common people on taste for architecture beyond superficial imitation of the Western one. First of all, an elite and initially expressionist architect Horiguchi Sutemi discussed non-urban-ness that connects Japanese tearooms and Dutch rural houses. This was through his modernist interpretation of function, his experience in the Netherlands and his reaction against the administrative viewpoints on city and architecture in the 1920s. Secondly, despite his former distant stance on monumentality, his request of the world-wide supreme expression to some projected monuments revitalized his own inclination. Seemingly his attitudes toward monumentality changed and the property of the monuments that honored the war victims or enhanced national prestige opposed the "international" feature of modern architecture. Although these points may hide his consistency, we can find his continuous dualism: one is the functionality that prevailed over architectural discourses at that time including Horiguchi himself and another is his expression that provided a local vernacular practice with the position in the world. These arguments enable us to cast a potential understanding among modern architects in those days in a new light.

Review: Designing Tomorrow: America’s World’s Fairs of the 1930s and Designing Tomorrow: America’s World’s Fairs of the 1930s

Designing Tomorrow: America’s World’s Fairs of the 1930s National Building Museum, Washington, D.C. 2 October 2010–10 July 2011 Museum of the City of New York, New York 5 December 2012–31 March 2013 A rich selection of images greeted visitors to the Museum of the City of New York from 5 December 2012 to 31 March 2013. Hints of American fairs’ modernist glamor shown in scenic renderings in the entrance hall forecast more pictures in the main display room. On the perimeter walls of a large gallery, black-and-white photographs illustrated American fairs of the 1930s: Chicago’s Century of Progress (1934–34), San Diego’s California Pacific International Exposition (1935–36), Dallas’s Texas Centennial Exposition (1936), Cleveland’s Great Lakes Exposition (1936–37), San Francisco’s Golden Gate International Exposition, and New York City’s World of Tomorrow (both 1939–40). On intermediate partitions, visitors saw renderings of vistas and individual pavilions, objects displayed at the fairs, and advertisements for sponsors’ products. Here and there, they paused to see short news and commercial films, although in the well-filled room, no seats could be provided. Souvenir brochures, booklets, catalogs, and commemorative trinkets appeared near the entrance and in vitrines. Captions to the photographs and short wall-mounted essays offered explanatory information. Crowded captions and pictures made the former sometimes hard to read, dissuading many visitors from learning more about the content of some of the images. The fraternal twin exhibitions in Washington and New York gave a coordinated overview of the fairs, almost as if they were one fair with varied sections. Laura Schiavo and Deborah Sorensen curated the initial and somewhat larger exhibition at the National Building Museum; Jessica Lautin played the same role in New York City. This later version included additional locally pertinent material. A well-illustrated catalogue contained essays on various topics; those not mentioned later in this review are the introduction by Robert W. Rydell; “ ‘Industry Applies’: Corporate Marketing at A Century of Progress,” by Lisa D. Schrenk; a photo-essay by Laura Burd Schiavo titled “Modern Design Goes Public”; Kristina …

Housing the Bell: 150 Years of Exhibiting an American Icon

Conceived, built, and briefly used over a thirty-year period, Mitchell/Giurgola’s Liberty Bell Pavilion housed and exhibited the single most venerated symbol of American democracy. Although the display of the Liberty Bell as a public talisman of freedom and independence dates back to 1852 when it was moved out of its original tower and placed on display within the Declaration Chamber in Independence Hall, the building of a special structure to house, protect, and exhibit the bell was first realized with Giurgola’s modernist design. Going beyond its immediate programmatic requirements, Mitchell/Giurgola Architects created a space that was both contemplative and functional for the more than thirty million people who visited the bell during the Bicentennial and afterward. Recent changes in exhibition, security, and architectural taste have redefined Independence Mall and with it the display of the Liberty Bell. Throughout the long history of venerating and preserving these forty-five acres of buildings and sites associated with the founding of the nation, the various approaches over time in exhibiting the Liberty Bell remind us of the primacy of design in shaping interpretation and experience.

Making Cairo modern? Innovation, urban form and the development of suburbia, c. 1880–1922

ABSTRACT:Cairo has often been seen as a ‘dual city’ divided between a ‘modern’ European city and a historic ‘traditional’ core. This article challenges this view through a historical exploration of suburban Cairo, a subject neglected by mainstream urban historians. A comparative examination of Ismailiyah, Garden City, Zamalek, Maadi, Helwan and Heliopolis illustrates that these suburbs took very different forms and reflected a wide range of historical and contemporary architectural tastes and design perspectives. Not all suburban developments were products of modern technical innovations and by 1922 no suburb had a majority of European residents. The use of the term ‘modern’ to characterize Cairo's suburbs therefore has the tendency to privilege western concepts of the modern and obscure the complexities of suburban social and economic development.

Deux confessions, une perfection. Architectures sacrées catholiques et protestantes, regards croisés (xvie – xviiie siècles – Fran

From the 16th to the 17th centuries, far from being consistently at opposite poles, religious architectural patterns - both Catholic and Protestant - often originate from the same matrix. On both sides, there was an urge to return to the model of the “ancient church”. For the Catholics, this usually meant the early Christian basilica model. For the Protestants, inspiration was taken from more diverse sources, notably that of the Temple in Jerusalem. Be that as it may, the actual way in which these places of worship was used begs similar questions in terms of architectural functionality, as concerns the congregation’s visual and aural experience. In the 18th century, the taste for architecture that harked back to ancient models ushered in new convergences between the two religious tendencies, as the taste for “fine architecture”, that was characteristic of the Age of Enlightenment, tended to allow aesthetic matters to prevail over the sacred.