When a person sees a building for the first time it is a natural reaction to judge it's beauty. This sense of beauty is atributed to our idividual perseption. As architect students we are tranied to analysis a building further than our own personal taste. We may not like the way a building looks on the outside but we can absorb other qualities of a building that are beautiful. So what is beauty exactly?
Beauty is often related to human physical attraction. This quality of attractiveness can be broken down into a phenomenon found in nature. The golden ratio, or phi, is a mathematical constant that is used in art, architecture, fashion, music, geometry, and many other facets because it always produces harmonious proportions. The human body is a prime application of phi. For instance the golden section, which is based on the golden ratio, gives order to our face. Our eyes, nose, chin, and mouth all corrospond to the golden ratio. When a person smiles it makes their face more inline with the golden ratio opposed to a frown which has the negative affect. Even the ear uses the Fibonacci spiral, another variation of the golden ratio, to obtain it's shape. The attractiveness we find in other people has the same mathematical basis for the attractiveness we find in architecture.
Architecture atributes a majority of its beauty to proportions and order. Architecture must use proportion somewhat different than that of painting or sculpure; architecture must consider the human scale. For with out human occupancy what value does architecture have? Lewis Kahn compairs architectural beauty to poetry, he says "Beauty is an all-prevailing sense of harmony, giving rise to wonder; from it, revelation. Poetry. Is it in beauty? Is it in wonder? Is it revelation?" I believe that any form of architecture has the potential to be beautiful, but great architecture must instill wonder and revelation to those who embody it.
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