BEYOND-BEAUTY OF THE CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE: NARRATIONS OF THE CREATOR, RECEIVER AND ARCHITECTURAL FORM

Ada Kwiatkowska

Abstract  

The complexity and variability of contexts of contemporary architectural form are crucial in understanding the meaning of beauty and kitsch. The present category of beauty can define the wide spectrum of phenomena, from the classical beauty, through the ugliness to anti-beauty. It also relates to the notion of kitsch, which can be placed in the same wide spectrum. The ambiguity and relativity of the esthetical criteria of valuation of digital age cause, that new categories of beauty and kitsch are born, exploring the same field of formal expressions, the so-called beyond-beauty. Interpretation of the contemporary architecture requires to define new criteria of esthetical evaluation of the architectural forms. In the paper, the fundamental estimation's criteria of the aesthetical value of contemporary architectural forms are formulated in the aspect of their beauty or uglinesses based on the hermeneutic method of analysis of the representative examples of contemporary art and architectures on three levels of the interpretative complexity: from the analysis of the meaning of the creator's narration (variables a priori), by the analysis of the receiver's narration (variables a posteriori), to the analysis of the narration of the form (metaphoric variables of message).

Article:

Kwiatkowska, Ada (2019). Beyond-beauty of the contemporary architecture: narrations of the creator, receiver and architectural form, Architectus 2019, no. 2, pp. 105-118

(photo by Ada Kwiatkowska)

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