Sallie Taylor

Architecture is born of the human need to contain space. Within both Grant Hildebrand’s Theory of Architecture and Jay Appleton’s The Experience of Landscape, similar theories that drive our aesthetic preferences are formulated. They propose that our preferences, both in architecture and landscape design, are based on how we live and react to our environments. In other words, the instinct to survive has evolved into our particular aesthetic preferences. They would agree that these preferences should drive the structures that we create if we are respond to them in a positive way. In Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space, he speaks of the experience of space. He describes the house as a structure made of various spaces that make up “the intimate experience of living”.  And that if we understand a house, he reasons, we can understand the soul. He also describes the images of poetry, art and literature, as vehicles for experiencing these sensations. Architecture is a powerful symbol expressing aspects of the inner architecture, how the mind is compartmentalized. With all this in mind, I use architecture to express the human existence in metaphysical symbology.