The Measureables & Unmeasureables in Arch

PROF.DR ALY RAAFAT
Professor and Previous Head of the Department of Architecture Cairo
University
Architecture Nile Award- winner
Architecture among all arts is the only one that in its highest maturity, the
measurable items in its constituents balance with the unmeasursable ones
While the measurable ones lead the unmeasurables in me birth of any
architectural movement, the opposite happens in its post- maturity or
during the final decadent period of the cycle.
Quantified architectural items are the rational ones; these technologically
achieved standards are the ones that can be evaluated numerically. Among
these are the environmental constraints in temperature, humidity
ventilation, etc. Other quantified items deal with performance health,
security, material comfort, economy. structural stability construction &
finishing materials, cost & time of execution and efficiency of work, They
all can be universally evaluated in degrees, percentages, hours and dollars
at any time and place on earth, ground or water high or low lands.
Unquantified items are the humanitarian ones as psychological, artistic,
visual expressionistic social, and symbolic energy .One can’t measure or
even arrive to any universal consensus on the evaluation of any of these
constraints.
Each of the three stages lasts nearly one third of the latest one century cycle.
However their relative importance follows the same shifts in paradigms in
design from rationalism to Romanticism. We have witnessed the three stages
of the 1st cycle &the dawn of a new one the last and current centuries.
A rational period of the 1st cycle contemporary emerged at the entry of the
20th century with technological rational architecture as its result .It moved to a
late modern period with a shift to humanitarian functional and visual
tendencies. These completed the cycle to Post Modernism at the end of the
century with unquantified romantic tendencies. Architecture returned back
to romantic historicism. As a reaction to these excessively romantic
examples a new – transitional modern version of Structuralism and
Deconstruction icons showed up by very effective pioneers.
The turn to the 21 century witnessed the emergence of the Environment
rational cycle that showed up in International awareness of our mother earth as
it is being spoiled by 20th technologies. Interactive and metaphoric icons are
shaping a new cycle witnessing the birth of new measurable contextual
architecture. Its organic roots go far info human awareness.