A triangular architectural relation model among sustainability, beauty, and power

Abstract

Sustainability, beauty, and power are notions that hit our contemporary perception every day. However, they have been an integral part of architecture and urban planning in various forms since the ages. The paper presents their fundamental descriptions, followed by an assessment of their mutual relations and impact on architecture through a triangular architectural relation model developed by the authors of the article. Using the theoretical thought experiment, it highlights eight boundary models along with their main characteristics, in particular, the implosion, explosion, shared-control, utilitarian, no-control, supremacy, inside-forced, and outside-forced architectural related models. Such models can help predict future events, explain past events, make decisions, and plan strategies, or reveal problems and propose new solutions. Other applications include determination of the causes of certain results or finding out the responsibility and mechanisms that led to them. The authors are of the opinion that the mutual denominator of sustainability, beauty, and power represents ethics that should be forced in architectural education and practice.