Architecture has always been a complex outcome of the propagation between the concrete and the abstract. In the archaic age architecture was divinatory, governed by “divine” geometries and forms analogous to a “perfect” prototype, which its success lied within the application of the “correct” analogy and not through formal intellectual analyses. Galileo’s concept of mechanical efficiency revolutionized the way machines were made. Machines were no longer built to “overwhelm the spectator” but a device to maximise efficiency. Mechanical aesthetic peaked its glory in the age of Functionalism, where design are stripped of ornaments and aesthetic is derived from the mechanical cleanness and execution.
Today, Functionalism is history and with biomimcry as the upcoming trend, the freedom, harmony and purity of nature remains seductive to architects of the time. With architecture evolving and changing, contemporary architects should act as “machines” in architectural thinking, which constantly innovate and adjust themselves to optimize the abstract idea and mechanical efficiency through the choice of materiality, structural adequacy and conceptual competence. The true beauty of architecture, is neither the maximised efficiency and cleanness praised by the Functionalists, nor the blind analogous natural forms, but an optimised balance of the two conflicting but complementary pair.
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