UQ Architecture research is taking a fresh approach to a debate which has been raging for centuries – is architecture art or is it a profession?
Architecture, Disciplinarity, and the Arts, a book edited by UQ Architecture researchers, opens a new chapter in the international debate surrounding architecture’s status as an art discipline alongside its more commonly accepted standing as a profession.
Since it was professionalised in the 19th century, architecture has been considered art, science, social science, engineering specialisation and profession.
In the new book, editors Dr Andrew Leach and Dr John Macarthur examine how thinking of architecture as an art accounted for the history of this debate and how this perspective shapes the challenges facing architecture.
Dr Macarthur, Head of the School of Architecture and Director of the ATCH (architecture, theory, criticism and history) Research Group, said the book looked at the factors which had historically determined architecture as an art.
“Architecture today owes much to the way these issues were thought about in the 18th century,” he said.
“By looking closely at these theoretical and historical issues as they were once discussed we can learn more about the way our own discussions, profession and education are organised.”
The project looks at architecture’s status as an art after the rise of aesthetics and considers whether or not it is legitimate today to describe architecture as an art.
Dr Leach, an architectural historian and Australian Postdoctoral Fellow at UQ, said the research would inform future architecture teaching.
“Architecture exists in the world like painting and sculpture, but as much as it shares a conceptual dimension with these other arts, it has to be useful as well as artistic – no one likes to think they’ve spent money on useless buildings,” he said.
“However architecture is taught now—even when it is considered a form of business, or a way of making sustainable homes and societies—schools of architecture need to understand how architecture once sat among the arts.”
International contributors to the book include scholars from the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States.
UQ’s ATCH Research Group is represented by essays from Dr Leach and Dr Macarthur, Dr Antony Moulis, Dr Naomi Stead and Dr Deborah van der Plaat and also UQ alumna Dr Rosemary Hawker.
Dr Leach said he hoped the book would encourage further local debate as it showcased leading Australian research in the architectural humanities.
“Architecture’s strong impact on the places and communities in which it is situated have long made it a subject for passionate debate within society and amongst its practitioners,” Dr Leach said.
“Our book publishes internationally significant research by scholars following how a very specific aspect of this debate has altered since the eighteenth century.”
Architecture, Disciplinarity, and the Arts was published in August by the Belgian academic press A&S Books, a publishing house specialising in books on the history and theory of architecture, art, culture and urban planning.
Media: Alice Walker at the Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and Information Technology (07 3346 7696 or a.walker1@uq.edu.au)
