Architecture and Composition

When I was 10 /11, I participated an art competition where came a really famous and respected artist who asked us very interestingly if we wanted to learn the rules of 'drawing'. Honestly I very intensely said 'yes'. And he turned out to be the greatest personal wizard of my life from that very moment when he declared there is actually no rules and regulations of drawing. All I do, every scratch I put on paper-is an art.

Well, that motivated me for a long time.

When I got into architecture, 'Composition' was a total alien to me which often led me to depression. It used to confuse me why do I even need to learn this? Firstly, i better explain 'composition in architecture'. It is basically done with basic shapes like dot, line, square, triangle, sphere for starter. And the objective is to be capable of arranging spaces in a good and functional manner.

Now here comes the part where I act cool and say, 'Well, there is no rule for composition'. (Trust me, I will be beaten for what I just said). Anyway, there are actually some gross rules for it, you know just to keep it on track, to keep a 'composition' a 'composition' instead of anything else. Not a big deal though. This grammar does not assure that it would certainly be a good composition; the thing 'beautification' is completely in the hands of us. The more it will be done with passion, the more it will be beautiful.

The first and foremost ground rule is that the composition cannot resemble anything tangible. It might have a 'concept' that might give the 'idea' of something tangible, but it is in no possible way can 'BE' the thing that already exists.

This often confuses us. Again, the objective of composition is 'Spacing'. So the Space that we create needs more care than setting of shapes. The more rhythmic the space is, the more it will be considered as a good composition. one thing, i better mentioned before that, it is better to practice freehand drawing of basic shapes to make them appear perfect.

It needs a Focus, a point where all attention of the spectators will meet. It is often done by placing a Big Shape, or placing a space surrounded by all shapes, or changing the orientation or a form in repetition, or change a form in the forms of same genre.

Negative space, is the space which cannot be used. So this is better to be very careful about intersecting shapes, and placing shapes. Like when two curve line intersects it often creates negative space as that space generally cannot be used to put things.

Intersection of forms often follows some rules in architecture. It i almost forbidden to intersect forms in edges, as this is a weak point. It often gives the sense that one of the forms might fall off or apart.

These are the gross rules of composition. Well almost every rule mentioned above has illustration.
This is always said that, composition is a way of touching an intangible area, this is a privilege to turn that intangibility to something tangible, and architects often have that luck to be the wizards of turning thing that we imagined into Real. It all depends on Feeling, the more Feeling can be occupied to touch that intangibility, the more it will be born with the dogmatic chance of being bewitching.