There is hardly any doubt that architecture has a long-term and intertwined relationship with art, with art often manifested in or in-architectural form, facade or independent sculpture. Art can be used to “do good”: to improve a bourgeois interface, to educate the public or to describe the values and skills of a local community. But in the worst case, the “artistic” side of the architecture can lead to results that are tokenistic, insulting or purely commercial. When does the relationship between art and architecture get angry? And how do we avoid “artificial people”?
From a first The perspective of the nations, the best way to think about this question, is to look at the decisions that we have to make in order to get a design or physical form. For art and architecture, these decisions are the history that is embedded in the design.
Great public art results from a clarity of the purpose of communicating a history of the place-a very well-researched history of the place, in which the history of the site, the endemic landscape, the memory of the place and the current neighborhood and the characteristics of this place can be seen.
And great public art – and also architecture – creates these focuses in history, like the melody in a song. It can really make it clear what a place is.
So I think that the relationship between art and architecture does not work if there was no dialogue about the history of place and country.
– Alison Page is an artist and designer of the First Nations (Dharawal and Yuin) with a comprehensive career that includes design, public art, interior and urban design. Her career began in the late 90s and worked in architecture and interior design in Australia's first Aboriginal Architecture Group, Merrima. She is currently a professor for practice at the School of Architecture at the University of Technology Sydney.
This article is one of six answers to the same question: “When does the relationship between art and architecture go too bad and how do we avoid” art wazing “?” Read the perspective of John Macarthurs on the same question here. Stay excited to reactions by Lou Weis, Morag Myerscough, Michael Miscamble and Emily Wombwell.