The story of the untangling of the rope, from an ancient temple legend, symbolizes the complex relationship between architecture and building science and highlights the challenge of integrating the two to create a balanced building. The lesson is that only when scientific approaches and humanistic thinking are harmoniously combined can a complete building be created.
In the ancient temples, a legend was told that whoever could untangle a tightly twisted rope could rule the world. ‘Alexander’ is said to have cut the rope with his sword and declared, “I have untangled the rope, and I rule the world!” The tightly twisted rope in this anecdote is a symbol of a complex problem, which also resembles the problem of the relationship between architecture and architectural engineering. In ancient and medieval times, the boundaries between the two disciplines were not clear, and they were intertwined as a single problem. In modern times, however, the problems of architecture have become more complex, and there is now a tendency to solve them by separating them into architectural and architectural engineering problems, like cutting a rope with a knife.
Architecture deals primarily with the relationship between space and people in architecture, and studies the problem of creating the form and space of buildings. Although architecture is a science and engineering discipline, its essence is closer to the humanities and the arts, as it creates space and form through humanistic, social, and philosophical thinking. The Sumiyoshi house by Tadao Ando is a prime example of a design based on this humanistic and philosophical thinking. The house was designed with a central garden to provide a sense of nature for the residents. However, this resulted in a cramped living space and the inconvenience of having to use an umbrella to go back and forth between the kitchen and the bathroom on rainy days. Despite these inefficiencies, the Sumiyoshi House conveys the philosophical idea that what humans need is nature, rather than the efficiency and convenience that are valued in modern society. In this way, architecture in architecture is created based on understanding human beings and space through humanistic and philosophical thinking.
Architectural engineering, on the other hand, deals with the engineering aspects of architecture. Architectural engineers use numbers and scientific experiments to calculate how many rebar to put in a column and determine the shape of columns and beams. Architectural engineering also deals with determining the right lighting, ventilation systems, and air conditioning to create a comfortable light, air, and temperature environment. Architectural engineering designs and plans buildings based on an engineering paradigm, and scientific methodology plays a key role in this process.
As such, architecture is composed of the humanities of architecture and the engineering of architectural engineering. However, there is no such thing as an all-architecture building, and there is no such thing as an all-engineering building, as neither can function properly as a building. However, as the discipline of architecture has become more fragmented, professionals have been trained to specialize in either architecture or engineering. This often results in a lack of engineering knowledge for those who have studied architecture, and a lack of humanistic and philosophical content for those who have majored in architectural engineering, resulting in buildings that are either architecturally biased or architecturally biased.
The ultra-luxurious government offices and ward offices that have recently become controversial in South Korea are examples of buildings that focus only on architectural content. These buildings had glass exteriors to express the transparency of government offices, but this resulted in buildings that were hotter in the summer and colder in the winter. The increased heating and cooling loads prevented the buildings from fulfilling their basic shelter function. In this way, if engineering is not considered when designing a building, the building can lose its function.
But just as a soulless body is just a corpse, so too is a building made entirely of technology without any humanistic or philosophical content. The Pruitt-Igoe housing complex in St. Louis, designed by Minoru Yamasaki, was hailed at the time of its design as a model for 21st-century housing, but it ended up becoming the center of a slum. The complex was blown up in 1972 as a way to reduce crime rates. The failure of Pruitt-Igoe demonstrates that architecture requires not only engineering efficiency, but also an ethos that takes into account human sensibilities and social context.
Architecture is inherently a matter that cannot be divided between engineering and the humanities. Good architecture is a balance of both, not one or the other. Architecture and architectural engineering are like intertwined ropes, and to do architecture is not to divide them into two, but to untangle them into a single whole. As it is said that he who untangles the ropes of an ancient temple rules the world, so he who untangles the tightly twisted ropes of architecture and architectural engineering into a single whole will truly rule architecture. Untangling these twisted ropes into a single whole is the problem that architecture must grapple with.
