Pogudin Yuri Alexandrovich
MANIFESTO OF DIALECTICAL SYNTHETISM AND ARCHITECTURE
Abstract: The manifesto reveals the creative credo of the architectural and aesthetic trend. Dialectical synthetism is aesthetics and architecture which bases its compositional solutions on the desire to synthesize the opposition parameters of geometric form, achieving plastic expressiveness combined with functional consistency and social significance. The semantic source of the concept is the category of synthesis in dialectical philosophy of Alexey Fedorovich Losev (1893-1988).
Key words: dialectical synthetism, dialectical architecture, architectural form, architectural composition, form generation, geometric opposites, synthesis, A.F. Losev
1. Architecture has come a huge way in its history, and now it is entering new frontiers. The 21st century witnesses a tsunami of architectural forms - such multifarious that it has become difficult to distinguish between beautiful and eye-catching, between noble and interesting. Already at the origins of modern architecture – a century ago – it led to the devaluation of the concept of beauty. But in its essence this concept has not disappeared. Without calling beauty by its name, every modern artist/designer/architect is looking for a form that is both meaningful and beautiful – in accordance with his creative credo.
2. The modern world is once again torn apart by spiritual and territorial contradictions. The spiritual identity of peoples and civilizations is not a uniform monolith, and it should not be one. Just as every person has his own life path – his destiny, so every nation and every country has its own destiny.
3. Art and architecture are those areas of creativity where people with different worldviews can be united in understanding and feeling beauty.
4. Many previous creative and architectural manifestos are characterized by negativism – as a negation of the previous major style. Thus, modernism dismisses the classics (remaining connected with it in a sense of proportions), and parametricism dismisses modernism. Dialectical architecture considers the history of forms and their meanings as a struggle and unity of opposites. In achieving such unity, synthesis becomes the key category.
5. It is possible to apply the dialectical triad to the construction of geometric forms, and consider forms and their parts and qualities within an architectural composition as theses, antitheses and syntheses.
6. In determining the criteria for a new architectural beauty, we can rely on the theory of the dialectical synthesis of opposites. The dialectical synthesis is not only a well-known synthesis of the arts. This is a direct form-building synthesis of the opposites of the entire aesthetic range of the architect’s tools presented as tangible and geometric genesis of an architectural composition in the expressive form of reasonable space.
7. Synthesis becomes such a union of two opposite principles, where they not only do not lose themselves, but also acquire new qualities in a new integrity unknown to them before synthesis. The whole is a singularity presented as the synthesis of its parts and properties, which is irreducible to their sum and is manifested in form.
8. Practicing architects can use the principle of synthesis (as the principle of generating new categories from different and opposite phenomena and properties) as another means of searching for new expressive compositions. The dialectical method has the potential to become a key one in the future development of general and applied creativity and composition theories. Architecture is a powerful source of inspiration and creativity in this way.
9. Any category of geometry, starting from a point, is at the same time an abstract mathematical concept, a verbal logical and a visual one. If the visual image of an octagon is some combination of images of a square and a circle, then it is simultaneously beautiful in both respects – both logical and visual. If the dialectical construction shows the movement of categories and beauty in their sense generation, then both visual and material geometry will be a mould, reflection and expression of this movement and this beauty. The geometric concept becomes the point of intersection of logic and aesthetics.
10. If at the logical and geometric level we dialectically combine concepts, and our mind perceives this connection as logical, integral and therefore beautiful, then at the visual-geometric and material–architectural level it will be artistically logical, integral and beautiful.
11. A geometric architectural form is capable of expressing concrete mythological and abstract verbal meanings, internal energies and events of the human soul. Three–dimensional forms can be expressive sculptures of verbal and emotional, intellectual and heartfelt notional beliefs of a person.
12. The dialectical principle of architectural composition is not to create different things from things of the same type, but to create the whole from different and opposite ones. The composition then is not limited to overcoming of the monotony of standardization, but encompasses the completeness of the combination (synthesis) of heterogeneous forms into a single whole. The dialectical architectural form is a synthesis and a birth of the synthesis of its opposition parameters, which unfolds in the space.
13. The method of architectural morphogenesis based on the dialectical triad ensures the connection of the parts of the composition into a logical whole, consciously or unconsciously interpreted at the visual level as a special consistency and expressiveness of the form. The spontaneous form-generating environment, structured by the counterpoint of dialectical logic, reaches the level of a logically constructed expressive three-dimensional form.
14. The verbal–associative method wakens an active form-generating fantasy. The primary images generated by it and structured by the architectural dialectical method become a source of generation of fundamentally new compositional three-dimensional solutions.
15. An architectural form is a structural and plastic integrity manifested in a specific figurative image of the external volume and internal space.
16. Not technology and technological progress, but sociology and human well-being become the priority direction of architecture development. The impact of architecture on society as a whole and on an individual, on behavior and mood, on spirit and will – and vice versa, the anthroposocial impact on architecture are priority directions for theoretical and practical search.
17. The purpose of dialectical synthetism and architecture is to create a new beauty that is born at the junctions of constructive form-generating oppositions and in accordance with the golden ratio standard of the classics.
18. Dialectical architectural composition is not based on the denial or the praise of the old or the new, but on the desire for synthetic knowledge, for the maximum coverage of all form-generating possibilities and their structuring.
19. The internal synthesis of the principles of classical and modern architecture will create a new architecture based both on succession and innovation.
20. Architecture should not become a slave to technology, programming and "artificial intelligence". Architecture is created by the spirit – in the unity of mind, heart and experience.
21. Our soul, our heart with a sense of beauty and imagination available to us – this is the environment which accommodates the creative event of transcription of semantic and kinetic energy into the actual infinity of forms.
22. In the architectural form-generating search, the individual self-expression is called to achieve a degree of social significance, a union of the architect's subjective creative energy and an objective social request. Architecture at all times becomes a synthesis of diverse human efforts and a harbinger of the new beauty.
23. Architecture is the arena of human activity and communication. Its task is to promote peace between people and the harmony of the human spirit.
Architectural Designer and Art Teacher
Yuri Pogudin
December 20, 2023. Zelenograd
References
1. Pogudin Y.A. Dialectical Logic and Architectural Morphogenesis. On the Use in Architectural Propaedeutics of the Dialectical Category of Synthesis in the Understanding of A.F. Losev. Credo New, 2022, no. 4, p. 108-133. (in Russian)
Available at: https://credo-new.ru/archives/2805 (Accessed December 28, 2023).
2. Pogudin Y.A. Verbal–associative Method of Architectural Morphogenesis. Architectural Form as Meaning (in Line with the Aesthetics of Expression of A.F. Losev). Credo New, 2023, no. 1 , p. 110–128. (in Russian)
Available at: https://credo-new.ru/archives/2877 (Accessed December 28, 2023).
3. Pogudin Y.A. The System of Categories of Architectural Form and the Problems of Teaching Architectural Composition (towards the Construction of a System of Architectural Categories in the Spirit of the Integral Philosophy of A.F. Losev). Credo New, 2023, no. 2, p. 67-84. (in Russian)
Available at: https://credo-new.ru/archives/2979 (Accessed December 28, 2023).
4. Pogudin Y.A. Syntez arkhitekturnoy formy. Ot smysla do kontsepta [Synthesis of Architectural Form. From Meaning to Concept]. Moscow, LitRes Publ., 2023. 186 p. ISBN: 978-5-532-91107-9.
Available at: https://litres.com/book/uriy-aleksandrovich/dialektika-arhitekturnoy-formy-ocherki-arhitekturnoy-69485020 (Accessed December 28, 2023).
5. Pogudin Y.A. Dialektika arkhitektury [Dialectics of Architecture]. Moscow, LitRes Publ., 2024. 90 p.
Available at: https://litres.com/book/uriy-aleksandrovich-pogudin/dialektika-arhitektury-69840274 (Accessed December 28, 2023).
