Exploring The Relationship Between Architecture Form And Form

Architecture is inevitably dependent on form, most important and difficult concept in architectural modernism. The important concept of form is not exclusive only to architecture, but also to art and culture in general. Form in architecture is commonly seen as the physical manifestation of the attempt in shaping the space around us. However, the meaning of form contains ambiguity between ‘shape’ and ‘idea’ or ‘essence’. The dual understanding of form has its root from its country of origin where it is developed, Germany. In German language there are two terms, which are ‘Gestalt’ and ‘Form’. The former means objects perceived by our senses and the latter is more abstract as it is conceived in the mind. However, most people always understand

According to Giulio Carlo Argan (1962) essay On The Typology of Architecture, he suggested that by “comparing and superimposing individual forms so as to determine the ‘type’, particular characteristics of each individual building are eliminated and only those remain which are common to every unit of the series. The ‘type’ therefore, is formed through a process of reducing a complex of formal variants to a common root form” (Nesbitt, 1996, pp. 243) . This means by comparing several forms in one architectural type, we can find its root or principle that “contains the possibility of infinite formal variation and further structural modification of the ‘type’ itself” . It is also possible that the variation and modification of the root form generates new types as a consequence to ‘sociocultural and technological changes’

Based on his lesson from Henri Poincare, he also suggest that “every natural phenomenon, however simple, is really composite, and every visible action and effect is a summation of countless subordinate actions”. Here, he is trying to say that the natural phenomena of growth and form as well as the organic ones have this composite nature, in which they can be interpreted by mathematics. To define a form mathematically, he uses the Cartesian co-ordinates method. The method is usually used in studying the morphology of organisms, such as fish, mammalian skull, etc. For example, when trying to analyze a fish, he mapped it by using a Cartesian coordinates of x,y axis and function. It is then possible to alter the direction of the axes or proportion of x/y to get a new figure of co-ordinates that represent the same x,y function with the former. This means that the fish has been transformed while maintaining its basic function of x,y within the coordinates. From biological point of view, the transformation of the fish morphology as well as other living organism is a result of adaptation to environmental factors. In other words, any material form could experience transformation when various actions of external forces are directly or indirectly applied to it .

In Cartesian transformation, it begins by having a co-ordinates grid of axes x and y of equal distance. The transformation