Architecture is an ART and SCIENCE

An architectural design professor discusses how architecture is and isn't like being an Artist and a Scientist. He talks to various figures from history and consults theoreticians to determine if architecture really is both an Art and a Science.
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Design With Company: designwith.co
University of Illinois at Chicago School of Architecture: arch.uic.edu/

[@0super]

great channel Stewart! Amazing!!! I am hooked

[@Dan-ud8hz]

“When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty... but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.” ― R. Buckminster Fuller

[@dagwould]

As soon as someone reduces architecture to 'problems' and 'solutions' I know we're headed for a crippling of potential. Architects contribute to the human environment, the open potential, they create and take opportunities, them make interventions to allow social exploration and expansion. On the way they face a myriad of challenges which they overcome. The do not solve problems. An umbrella solves a problem. An architect does far more.

[@GOLDVIOLINbowofdeath]

@@dagwould Apparently you exalt architects way above inventors. You’re probably oblivious so what your life would be like without those inventions. The next time it’s pouring down rain wear your raincoat and leave the umbrella at home

[@Adolar]

Seeing the difference between your first video and your latest video shows how much confidence you’ve gained over 6 months. I love seeing such a high quality channel make these topics more accessible outside of the university!

[@aurelienf284]

The rythme and respect of the script make all the difference, still amazing quality for a first vidéo !

[@iammewhonew839]

Great info! Thanks for taking the advice of your students. I think a lot of professors should be creating content like this. Imagine all the hours you do to get ready for class. well here is a second platform to have and teach a greater number of people who are passionate about architecture. Great job on all the videos so far Can't wait for the next one!

[@stewarthicks]

Thank so much Ryan!

[@cbpaladin9429]

i've been binging on your videos and this feels somewhat productive

[@stewarthicks]

Awesome! I like to toe the line...

[@stephen9164]

I've been looking for a channel like yours for a long time. Subscribed immediately.

[@embongmohamad3981]

Dear Prof. Hicks, I have been watching your videos from the latest ones but today I decided to watch the first one! Surprisingly this is more relaxed, more casual which I can always find in the lecture hall instead of youtube. you talked with emotions and expressions, may be straight from the heart with no scripts whatsoever, and I can truly relate it as a lecturer of architecture myself. Anyway, well done and all the best to you. to more videos in future!

[@ej_buendia]

Wow so much has changed since this first vid but the quality is still visible. You’re channel is one of my best finds since. I really appreciate your insights and topics and how you relate them to your city or a place you know. That makes the content/topic more relatable. As much as I liked the concise script of the latest vids, the pauses, uhms, and laughs of the earlier ones are charming! Excited for more vids. Stay safe Sir!

[@gabidan]

Hi Stewart! I'm hooked to your channel now, thank you. You're bringing me new perspective on architecture, one I can relate to, understand and analyze.

[@yes-mf2sw]

Came across your channel and super cool to find out that you're a profesor at UIC. I'm currently a junior and always wanted to learn more about this field - especially seeing how we live in Chicago. Loving the channel!

[@benvin10365]

I love your video series! I feel like I'm getting the Architecture education that I wanted, without the love of architecture being beat out of me. I might have stuck with it had my experience had been more pleasant and as fun as your videos.

[@ArchAnime]

Was looking for this! Glad you put it out, Stewert. Welcome to the youtube space!

[@stewarthicks]

Thanks for the welcome. Love your channel.

[@ArchAnime]

@@stewarthicks thank you!

[@bugarakos9112]

You have a nice channel, wish more people discover it.

[@adam-farooq]

love the setup and topics

[@anthonyraymundo9102]

you’re on to something special with the videos you have been been posting lately. keep it up!

[@stewarthicks]

Thank you!!

[@parparparmesan6368]

When the algorithm has provided something really nice of a channel to subscribe too :) ! Really love the videos you put out and noticed how comfortable you are with each video you have posted so far. You will make it far and tall (architecture pun😆) with you content Stewart!

[@stewarthicks]

Thank you so much. Glad to have you along for the ride!

[@parparparmesan6368]

@@stewarthicks your videos inspire and actually challenge the way we view architecture beyond their presence of "just bricks" or "just commerce". It provides a sense of insight to what and why it is made for and what the audience understands it to be.

[@archietekt]

Awesome format! Subscribed and sharing!

[@josiahorm1650]

Thank you for putting everything into context for me

[@Sleepjumper]

Great start! Smashed that subscribe and rang that bell.

[@stewarthicks]

Thanks!!

[@wapozgamunyenyembe5341]

I like the way you put the contrasting warm and cool lights in the background. Its kinda like the other is art and the other science.

[@stewarthicks]

Observant!

[@shraddhashetty1417]

Good Luck! Here from your class this semester!

[@aes53]

I’m slowly working my way through your videos, in some cases forward to backward. Your channel is one of the best things I found on KZbin in a long time. Up to and including videos of adorable kittens. I got a chuckle out of your chemistry analogy. In my day job I’m a chemistry professor, that is when I’m not watching architecture videos. I had a colleague who use to say he became a chemist because it was indoor work with no heavy lifting. I wonder if that’s true of architecture?

[@stewarthicks]

Glad you're enjoying the videos! That can be true...

[@jillianwilson9166]

Kia Ora from Invercargill, New Zealand. Thank you for putting up these videos. I am studying Architectural Technology and your videos are very informative and entertaining.

[@GOLDVIOLINbowofdeath]

What is architectural technology vs architecture school vs structural engineering? Is that a 4 year degree?

[@neildurbin]

Great channel. As someone with an Architectural Engineering degree in my past life I’ve thought about this topic a lot. Also a fellow Michigander. Cheers!

[@stevemiller7949]

Stewart, you appear to be a genuine polymath. For my money you pack a lot of punch into brief segments. Thank you!🙂

[@mrmonkeymanfreak]

I wish you taught history and theory at my university. I feel like I've been learning more from your videos than 6 years of architecture theory courses.

[@GOLDVIOLINbowofdeath]

Theory is for the elites

[@jaypaldecha4089]

Thanks from India Sir, Your videos are informative as well as connecting. Keep On going

[@michalojrzanowski3529]

glad you made this!

[@ArkMaDuke]

I'll binge watch all your videos ^_^ starting with this one

[@GOLDVIOLINbowofdeath]

I’m designing an van/RV conversion for my Sprinter passenger van. Named it Maison de Verre, after my favorite residence that I toured as an architecture student in 1977. I am hoping my design lives up to its namesake, or more, even though I only have vague memories of what impressed me about Maison de Verre. With the limited space and weight capacity of a 144” tall top Sprinter, it takes lots of ingenuity to come up with an inspiring form that enhances functionality. For entertainment while recuperating from a rollover car accident that year ago this week, I binge watched KZbin RV conversion videos and I am still amazed as I still watch these videos by how little creativity there is in these van conversions, or RVs in general, in spite of the fact that a sprinter van conversion can cost half a million $.

[@caseyahlbrandt-rains103]

Wow this felt really good!

[@emrazum]

For me, any human creativity is inherently artistic. So, science is maybe a more methodical type of art with a lot of subgenres. Even a chemist is using their creative capacity to do an experiment, write a paper, etc. The only tangible difference between them and a sculptor is the medium and how they approach it.

[@volodx]

Top atchitecture chanel! Ty for contributing to the community

[@manuelgalipeau3872]

This was excellent. Thank you

[@JPFighter93]

My personal take on Architecture (as a german engineering student) is the following: Architecture is the form of Art with the most responsibility. Not because the designed building might collapse (thats what we engineers are for), but because this form of art is inevitable. If a painter makes a picture wich most people think is ugly, then those people can just not buy or look at it. Maybe someone thinks its a good picture and buys it, but noone has to see it every day if they dont want to. But if a architect designs a building wich most people find ugly, and it gets built. Then everyone around has to live with that

[@lalajean2975]

I actually combined science and art in my design because in my previous design i just focus on spacing and form concept but as a 2nd year archi. Student now i found it fascinating to put something different in my desigmed . Im still not skilled yet but i would like to learn more about it ( thats why i was thibking studyimg engineering not really having a degree but maybe just the basics

[@knut6342]

i already love this!

[@jennieivins]

I've always thought of science being the practice of looking at things that already exist and making new discoveries about them. And art being the practice of imagining things that could be and bringing them into the world to be discovered. There's a balance. You can lean heavily to one side, but you are never going to be completely disconnected from either of them.

[@smallp0x86]

Great channel! As a carpenter aspiring for traditional timber framing and forms, I find that modern architects have fallen on their heads with non-symmetry for the sake of corckyness and breaking rules by breaking them again and achieving a very similar product. I am sick and tired of buildings that look like a walkytalkie that burn people or giant red square poking out of a cloth shaped building. We are completely forgetting 5000 years of building evolution in less than a 100 years of arrogant career pursuing "reinventing" architects. If architects are suppose to question everything, when will they question the very fundamental rule of trying to reinvent everything and go back at least sometimes to ancient knowledge? Ancient architecture is timeless, is objectively sought after by tourists and higher property value. Post modernism has brought about ever changing fads that scars the skyline and the environment....

[@stevemiller7949]

Very well said!

[@MukasaIbraart]

Thank you This is good information

[@B2BWide]

"At the end of the day, all art is architecture" (Sanuel B Wise, wannabe influencer and art observer) Okay, taking kidding aside, I love your channel. It is so balanced, so informative and comprehensive that I binge-watched several "episodes" while retouching product photos for a webshop... To tell the truth, each episode took more then twice of time than their running time because I had to jump back to parts and images. I think this explains a lot about the effect your channel had on me, a humble and mediocre photographer :)

[@idansasa]

I prefer to address this conflict not as if there are two sides. Architecture is the doctrine of building planning and design. In order to plan a building, we need a vast set of skills, data, tools etc. Every one of those is used in the amount fit to a certain structure (in accordance with the use of it, the place it meant to be built, the people ought to visit it etc). Art is one of those means we architects take advantage of when we approach the work of design.

[@michaelkats4097]

Keep it up! Great vid

[@stewarthicks]

Thanks!

[@JAD3N]

Love your videos.

[@Chisscaso]

Perfect channel for me right now.

[@clogsism]

We love your videos as architect-wannabes! I reckon Lefebvre on space ergo architecture, must have something useful to add?

[@GOLDVIOLINbowofdeath]

Who’s we?

[@clogsism]

@@GOLDVIOLINbowofdeath who wants to know?

[@extraoffice7981]

Great videos! Love it.

[@stewarthicks]

Thanks!

[@rain-jpg]

💜💜💜💜 i love your videos thank you so much!

[@jml732]

It's a service (more a profession) with the emphasis on providing design. This includes implementing scientific models but also planing (law and economy) as well as cultural factors. You need to master specific artistic or scientific disciplines, however it doesn't make architecture per-se an art nor science but an architect can indeed be an artist or a scientist. The unique part about design is, that you take the natural- or build environment and re-fabricate it giving it a functional, cultural and/or aesthetic purpose (depending on if your process is based on telling a story or a guideline), so when thinking even further I'd put architecture into the field of "environment".

[@cbpaladin9429]

could you make a video on why are contemporary columns not as pretty as the ones from antiquity or the renaissance?

[@stewarthicks]

That's a good one! I will. You might enjoy an instagram @bizarrecolumns.

[@lsmrkqj]

Science: questioning new norms Art: creativity in creating new ideas

[@ConanDuke]

That lamp tho.

[@dagwould]

Architecture is a craft. If it was a 'science' we would expose students to fluid dynamics to describe how people flow in constrainted volumes, we would explore mathematical network theory and topology to understand how spaces and forms 'work'. But we don't. Even our understanding of simple engineering statics is miniscule...it should be far more. If it was an 'art' it would extend far beyond the exterior decoration and fashion that many buildings exhibit.

[@jayarikishii]

Can you create certified courses with CEU maybe in LinkedIN Learning? Would have been super helpful if Universities accepted these kind of courses, especially for someone with ADHD.

[@simonbowden8408]

You compare art and architecture. And architecture and science. But one could argue that architecture and art are both cultural memes, that are part of and a reflection of our social world? And so when concrete, then steel, then glass came along the meme changed a bit. Evolved. The art meme is more about a reflection of who we are, while the architecture meme is different in that it is is part and parcel of our built environment, which is part and parcel of our social world? It's both a reflection of our world and it makes up our world. Thanks for the tip on Feyerabend. Love your channel. Really excellent.

[@simonbowden8408]

Science is supposedly different, notwithstanding Feyerabend's critique (& Planck "science proceeds one great funeral at a time"). In theory competing hypotheses get tested with experiments. "Evidence" says A is better than B. Of course all science and maths are just local approximations.. And scientists are humans. But science isn't a cultural meme, like art and architecture?

[@GOLDVIOLINbowofdeath]

@@simonbowden8408 No, Fauci is Science, and he is god

[@aaron2709]

Good video. I would argue the Bauhaus was a 'design' school rather than an art school. Meyer makes this attitude clear. Gropius and Mies also thought of the traditional 'arts' of painting and sculpture as just decoration for architecture. Painting and sculpture were the weakest programs there, only producing one notable painter: Josef Albers... as close as you can get to an art-scientist. They produced many more important designers of furniture, textiles, lighting and other architectural fixtures.

[@tutenes632]

great video

[@jfaurbo]

You used two background images about the history of abstract art and history of architecture... Could you let me know your sources.

[@Sinisa0000]

Charles Jencks and Alfred Barr diagrams.

I say Da Vinci, that's the man

[@aamerjr1520]

How can I have all words that you just said in this vid? Cause I have a presentation (why architecture is an art and a science in the same time?) I really need help my English is not too much

[@musamusashi]

As a musician with an (untrained) interested in architecture, i feel that both music and architecture are somehow at the crossroad between art and science. No surprise that, in the past, great minds would easily crossover: unfortunately modern society has an obsession with specialization and box labelling.

[@therupoe]

I know NOTHING about architecture and would love to know more

[@stewarthicks]

Happy to have you here. Hope the channel helps.

[@0architect-]

What a party that was.

[@0architect-]

What is fascinating to me is the way humans make their buildings. It has an element that we haven't found any example of it in the nature, straight lines. I am questioning the relationship between the existence of consciousness in a species and the ability to imagine perfect forms, such as a straight line.

[@0architect-]

Think about it, the mind decided it's own habitat is to be made up of straight lines, forming a mere perfect geometrical shape.

[@0architect-]

Fascinating.

[@0architect-]

@@oltedders yeah later on I found many examples, just to give few; grass, kinda trees, some rocks and specially, the light.

[@bernardwind1633]

Love your work, but I think its more of three legged stool, where the third leg that seems to be excluded from academic discourse, globally! is Business. without having a savvy business model there is no place to make architecture. If just considering Art and Science as the definition of architecture, it reduces it to a polarity. Business as an integral part of making architecture though is arguably in the column of the "black arts" for architects, as being hidden. The evidence that business informs architecture is visible where the Design process is influenced by business decisions

[@xxGytis15xx]

I think that is only true for modern/recent architecture, and could change in the future, if you look at the grand scheme of architectural theory then business has a relatively small influence. Then again, the influence of business may continue to increase and even overshadow the art & science of it, & can be argued it has, since the vast majority of buildings are not even designed by architects anymore

[@dr.useless4094]

Consider me inspired. Thank you!

[@ONeill01]

There is a profession that is the perfect blend of science and art, it's Architectural Technology.

[@GOLDVIOLINbowofdeath]

That’s a profession?

[@ONeill01]

@@GOLDVIOLINbowofdeath Yes

[@GOLDVIOLINbowofdeath]

Brighton College wrote: Architectural Technologist Education: Certification in architectural technology or a related field is usually required. Job Description: Architectural technicians provide technical assistance to professional architects and civil design engineers in carrying out research; preparing drawings, architectural models, specifications and contracts; and in overseeing construction projects. Don’t see any art in that description.

[@ONeill01]

​@@GOLDVIOLINbowofdeath I failed to see your point, what did you prove here from a snippet of a post from a college? You mean Architectural Technologists, not Architectural Technicians, Technicians do not exist with Architectural Technology as the role has been withdrawn, please refer to the CIAT definition of Architectural Technology. Art and architecture have a deep connection that unites them through their design, you don't need a description that spells out this, this is obvious when one studies architecture.

[@pyhead9916]

It has been discovered that Jackson Pollock's art adheres to mathematical fractal dimensions.

[@danielpirone8028]

Coming out of the gate strong!

[@pianomanhere]

Stewart: I just discovered your wonderful channel yesterday (12/29/2021). Now, I've become addicted to it far more quickly than when I became addicted to cigarette-smoking. 🙂🚬 😁🚬 Cheers. 🍹 🍹

[@7th_CAV_Trooper]

That party would be held in a mid century modern home filled with cigarette smoke.

[@thanatoriousbum7473]

THIS SHIT HARD

[@ubroc]

Perhaps you could investigate the differences rather than the overlaps between the disciplines. That Architecture incorporates aesthetics, technology, and philosophy does not make it either Art, Science, or Philosophy. Consider the difference between the idea of accommodation and compromise and how that impacts the integrity of a work of Architecture v/s Science or Art. Or the difference between media. And remember that all disciplines require creativity.

[@GOLDVIOLINbowofdeath]

You friend Paul Freyer

[@tutenes632]

👍

[@pyhead9916]

I consider architecture to be a structure which encloses space. A Tuff shed is architecture because it does enclose space, but it's also BAD architecture. A wall in a garden is also architecture, because it encloses space. Mountains, valley's, and rivers are all natural architecture.

[@brian-jv1nw]

Architecture is a scientific method. First you hypothesize if the building. Then you building. Then you measure true.

[@archwaldo]

I think I understand what Hannes Meyer was saying about architecture being a "biological process". It's just like birds building their nests, and beavers forming dams. They build these structures to suit their needs. Just like humans and our cities. It happens naturally. Therefore the architect's role is to add value to this inherently natural process - Make the bird's nest MORE than just a bird's nest, or a beaver dam MORE than just a dam. Architects should make a building more than its intended purpose, By injecting ART into its function, Though masterful use of the design principles and processes. Because if architecture is JUST art, then it has no function.

[@angrydragonslayer]

Or maybe make a really good nest/dam?

[@alexm9148]

I thought it is commonly accepted that architecture is both art and engineering. But architecture as a science… I don’t see that.

[@riccia888]

That is why architecture is art and science combine. What you did is you remove art and complicate the meaning and say just art and more science.

[@stevenikitas8170]

The Four Legs of Western Culture are art, architecture, literature and music. They each have their own contribution to make. None is "better" than the other. If any of the four legs are lost, the culture is incomplete.

[@zorngottes1778]

The study of man made rules cant be a science. You will only find out what You Yourself invented. Real science allways deals with things that happen in nature or rules that are able to describe nature. Jurisprudence is no science. Economics is no science. Architecture is no science. Marhematics is, chemistry is, biology is, physics is, history is. One more? Architecture is or should be the highest of all arts. Most so called modern architecture is just a sign of nothingness, a collection of big symbols of cultural decay and making all, everything and everyone, the same.

[@phucle475]

Who throws the weird part and the gay part? Whoever says Buddha is a philosopher raises a flag

[@TeethToothman]

🦀🦐🦀

[@harenterberge2632]

Architecture should most of all be a service to its' users and the community it stands in, rather than an individual artistic expression.

[@GOLDVIOLINbowofdeath]

Maybe, sometimes, depends