Critical Response to Architecture

A critical response to architecture. The goal of this assignment is to explore your reactions to a building or space through a critical description and analysis of its formal qualities and composition. Select a building or space that provokes in you a strong reaction, either positive or negative. Your first paragraph might be devoted to this purely subjective and emotional response (e.g. “As I entered the lobby, I was felt an uncontrollable urge to break into song…”).

Then concentrate the rest of your essay investigating the how and why of this reaction. Pay attention to such factors as massing (vertical, horizontal, symmetrical, asymmetrical), spatial arrangement and rhythms, materials, color, textures, ornament. How do these specific characteristics coalesce to create an experience or visual effect?

Do you think that your response was intended by the architect? If not, is it the result of the forms and spaces or the product of your own experience and associations? Do not hesitate to use drawings and diagrams to support your exposition.