A playground for the architects of the late 19th and early 20th century, Chicago showcases what many find to be an invigorating environment born from the beauty of its buildings. But what makes a building beautiful?
“To describe a building as beautiful therefore suggests more than a mere aesthetic fondness; it implies an attraction to a particular way of life this structure is promoting though its roof, door handles, window frames, staircase and furnishings. A feeling of beauty is a sign that we have come upon a material articulation of certain of our ideas of a good life.”
Alain de Bottom
Further:
“We are drawn to call something beautiful whenever we detect that it contains in a concentrated form those qualities in which we personally, or our societies more generally, are deficient. We respect a style which can move us away from what we fear and towards what we crave: a style which carries the correct dosage of our missing virtues. That we need art in the first place is a sign that we stand in almost permanent danger of imbalance, of failing to regulate our extremes, of losing our grip on the golden mean between life’s great opposites: boredom and excitement, reason and imagination, simplicity and complexity, safety and danger, austerity and luxury.”
Alain de Bottom
As we are each shaped by unique individual and cultural experiences, we each have different visions:
“There are as many styles of beauty as there are visions of happiness.”
