When architecture begins with life
Architecture is often discussed through form. Combeau Murtagh begin somewhere more fundamental: with life.
Their work is guided by four principles; Life, Context, Content and Consistency, which together offer a useful way of thinking about architecture not as an object, but as something inseparable from the way we live.
LIFE
The great Portuguese architect Álvaro Siza once said, “To create architecture is to geometrize.” This statement is unquestionable, yet incomplete because ultimately, architecture is about life: how to contain it, how to celebrate it, and how to amplify it.
The how is the architect’s central concern and greatest challenge. How translates into form, geometry, and physicality and these elements gain purpose and beauty only when they serve the acts that define life itself: eating, walking, talking, sleeping, watching, playing, listening, praying, and so on.
CONTEXT
Architecture must resonate with its many contexts topographical, landscape, urban, and material.
Geometry, materials, textures, construction methods, colors, light, references, and vegetation, among others, are layers that help build and deepen the dialogue between a project and its surroundings.
CONTENT
Architecture also conveys meaning.
Good architecture has the power to shape both physical and cultural realities. Throughout history, buildings, monuments, and cities that were thoughtfully conceived have endured as timeless expressions of human endeavor.
Victor Hugo captured this essence beautifully: “Architecture is the great book of humanity, the principal expression of man in his various stages of development, either as force or as intelligence.”
CONSISTENCY
Master planning, landscape, architecture, and interior design are, in principle, distinct disciplines and scales within a project. Yet, they ultimately converge to create a cohesive and unified experience.
The harmony and consistency between the whole and its details form the backbone that sustains and integrates every layer of design.
I have been thinking about these ideas in relation to XALA, where Combeau Murtagh are helping shape a place conceived to influence the future of coastal development with architecture, landscape and community understood as one.
What if the measure of living exceptionally were not only how we live, but what we leave behind?
