A Quest for Architectural Poetics

Abstract

Considering the prevalence of poetry in the Iranian culture, the present paper is of the belief that poetry is interwoven into Iranians’ poetic instincts and ethnic spirits, and that architectural poetics and inspirational qualities correspond with parts of sublime human desires of a people long associated with poetics. This study, therefore, reflects on the nature of ‘poetics’ and its aspects in areas such as philosophy and literature, where poetics enjoys a clear definition, and then moves on to investigate ‘architectural poetry’ in the related literature.It finds ‘architectural poetics’ one of the essential sublime needs, a quality which arises from ‘external affordances’ on one hand, and ‘internal competence’ on the other. This ‘internal competence’ is the individual’s ability resonate the poetic potential of space, and the ‘external affordance’ is the unveiling of the spirit of ‘collective imagination’ in the visible. Imaginations which are archetypes of human life, timeless patterns dividable to ‘embodiment imaginations’, ‘nature imaginations’ and ‘time and timeliness imaginations’. Incorporations of these imaginations in poetic works of architecture reify architectural poetics. Poetic works of architecture facilitate the unveiling of imaginations in incremental or reductive processes through which the visible is organised around the collective soul.

Keywords

• architectural poetics
• affordance
• collective imaginations
• appearance