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Preliminary communication

How to cure architecture; A contribution to the analysis of the sociopathology of building

Boris Morsan


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Abstract

The crisis in newer architecture is expressed in the mass production of superficially designed buildings and in the small number of architectural works of art. This has reached the proportions of a kind of social disease with a group of disorders, clearly visible symptoms, processes and, to a certain extent, causes.

Just as mental derangement changes the behaviour, functioning, capabilities and way of life an individual, so this social disease has unsetled the functioning of social mechanisms and disrupted links betwen processes. Social behaviour in architectural creativity can be compared with the clinical pictures described in the psychiatry of the individual. The similarity is significant, and the terminology is surprisingly appropriate for descriptions of social behaviour although the goveming processes on the social and individual level differ. This is not the same disease transferred form an individaula to a social level. The causes of the disorder on the two levels are essentially different and mainly still rather unknown, and the path from individual inception to social disorder are long and stratified. The problems of pathology in bUilding, which inciude an environment polluted with unsuitable architecture and places of maximum pollution, the development of methods of prevention, cure etc., must be interpreted in the context of social psychiatry. As a mass phenomenon, these problems should be treated as part of mental hygiene and it is from this aspect that influence of architecture should begin. Different atitudes various social groups have towards architecture result in conflicting activities: on one hand architecture is considered an art, and on the other the practice exists of cheap projects, mas sconstruction and profit, to the disadvantage and detriement of architecture. Each of these atitudes results in different and separate behaviour, so that society sems greatly to reflact disorders known in individua idisease. The desire to realize what we call god architecture exists, but the clear plan is lost on the way to the goal, becoming futile as procedures area ccommodated to satisfy partial and momentary interests and gains. There is no hierarchy of logical system of demands and procedures. Disorders, as levels of the same problem, swep from individual situations and cases to th community as a whole, influencing and generating each another.

The result of this patemis the appearance of incoherent, contradictory and unsystematic
themes with many symbols and images linked in various random manners, without reason, ned or sense. This gives birth to environmental fragments tumed to their own isolated reality. In today's substantial production towns and landscapes are clutered with examples of badly designed architecture, badly solved problems and mistakes in composition. This reality exists and is constantly and latently at work as a complex system of scenery that people are only occasionally aware of.

Keywords

Hrčak ID:

30763

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/30763

Publication date:

30.6.1994.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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