مفهوم گرايي در معماري: بررسي تطبيقي ويژگي هاي معماري مفهوم گرا در مقايسه با هنر مفهوم گرا در دوران معاصر

Conceptualization in Architecture: A Comparative Analysis of Conceptual Architecture and Conceptual Art in Contemporary Age

The word "concept" has been used in many theoretical discussions (especially in architectural schools) with different applications and aspects that are somewhat contradictory. Also, some other phrases such as "conceptual" art or "conceptual architecture" have been used with ignorance to their true meanings. In some cases, the word "concept" has been used instead of primary ideas or general ideas or sometimes as study models in design process. Using this word with so many different meanings in architectural literature is really disappointing. On the other hand, design concepts in architecture have been written about by many authors before. The majority of these writings, however, analyzes and criticizes concepts as end products of the design process. By contrast, this paper intends to de- scribe this word by comparing it to conceptual art and its use in practice and depict it from viewpoint of design process itself. A comparative analysis of conceptual art and conceptual architecture shows that appearance of "concept" in conceptual art is related to the scientific research about the nature of question, dematerialization, de-formalism and anti-aesthetic status of the artistic products while in architecture, it is related to nostalgia, sprit of the time, contrast with context, metaphors, radical aspi- ration of form, physical suspension of architecture and transitive concepts. In spite of this, there are some similarity between conceptual art and conceptual architecture in this regard: using research in design process, importance of design process and benefiting from literature. A Comparative analysis also shows that conceptual art and conceptual architecture are two fundamentally different disciplines and conceptual architecture is weakest when it tries to imitate conceptual art and neglects its architectural properties. Conceptual art considers the "immaterial" ideas that define its artistic concepts as the primary issue and its object status and method of production as the secondary one. Paying attention to production process instead of final form can be observed in conceptual architecture but it is different from that of conceptual art because architecture should be conforming to needs, program, construction and budget. Conceptual architecture is related to conceptual words (such as emptiness, lightness, transparency, etc), production process and material and also is related to the context. Architecture exists in the entirety of its productive processes, from thinking and writing to drawing and building, including consideration of materials, structure, costs, techniques, and relationship to other practices, events, and places and it can not neglect them. What connects these various aspects is architectureʹs reference to its objective nature. Projects, built or unbuilt, that do not consider this physicality closely, are less successful from architectural viewpoint. This statement can be read simultaneously as reactionary, dogmatic, or even obvious, but there is no easy way around it.