MY MAJOR (Architecture) - Essay Example

responds in some measure to some external or prevailing cultural climates when making their designs, hence overtime it has emerged that architecture is a cultural artifact reflecting the nature of that culture.(Fawcett, 1998) Over the years since Vitruvius writing at the time of the founding of the Roman Empire, Ii has been recognized that an appreciation of the role of architecture is essential to the understanding of the art of architecture itself. Vitruvius in his time identified that there are three basic important components of architecture as firmitas, utilitas and venustas.

These three words were later described by Sir Henry Wooton in the seventeenth century to mean firmness, commodity and delight respectively (MacDonald, 1994) Commodity is in the Vitruvian qualities referred to the practical functioning of the building structure. It means the practical functioning of the building will require that the spaces provided for in the structure is actually of use and serves the purpose for which the building was built. Firmness is the most basic quality. It encompasses the buildings ability to preserve a high physical integrity and survive in the world as a physical object.

The part of the building involved mostly in firmness is its structure, without structure there is no building and hence no commodity. The final quality is delight, this simply referrers to the beauty of the structure including the beauty of the external environment and the interior design. In order to appreciate fully the qualities of the work of the architecture, the observer or critique should at least know something on its structural makeup. (MacDonald, 1994) The architect as a person should be well conversant with the various disciplines of life; he or she should be well equipped with the numerous branches and the varied kinds of learning, for it is through his or her judgments that all the works of art is put to test (Morgan, 2014).

This knowledge then becomes the ‘child’ of