the Geometer and the City

The study of architecture is a broad field indeed… Yet, there tends to be a sort-of-hierarchy that arranges such the student's interests in a nested box – one or two subjects reach out and gather import in direct response to our perception of these in the world of our experience. They encompass the others. In other words, there is an order that suggests a web of relationships that is non-linear (imagine this in 3 dimensions as an analogy). For example, perhaps it is the city (urbs) that gathers the rest of this noble list… the city becomes a generator of culture and history – both of which reside in the plan and material (and tectonic) fabric of the city. …And the environment – it is that which envelopes the city, pressing inward to inform the material structure and configuration of the city – it is a deep skin that is full of pores and interstitial tissue that, together, both orients us to the environment and places us in the world. A corollary to our in-habitation or participation in the city. The environment surrounds and upholds and batters the city's walls in a choreography of both offering and erosion. It is in the physical structure of architecture that the forces that we call nature are met and resolved in respect to the needs of culture. …and Form… well, the architect becomes a Geometer.