Compose styles
Rather than blending styles toward a middle, this gives them roles. The first one carries the structure, the next comes in as the accent, and anything after that shows up in a single detail. Where they fight each other, it says so before you start.
How to divide the work
- Composition
- Follow Emotional Architecture: Close the outside with thick walls, opening only to courtyard and water
- Type
- Set in Emotional Architecture's manner (Sink signage into the wall color and let shadow make it readable), and let International Style's lettering (Align sans serif signs to the column grid, flush with the wall) appear only where you want the eye to catch.
- Material
- Ground in Emotional Architecture's material (Rough plaster in one vivid color, with the hour's light calculated in); bring in exactly one thing from International Style (Steel and concrete frame, white rendered planes, large sheets of glass).
- Colour
- Build on #d9ccb3, #f46bb9, #476fb5 and admit one accent from #eeece5, #9ca3a5, #252729.
Where they fight
- Emotional Architecture and International Style both belong to Modern Architecture, so the difference is small. Push the roles further apart than feels comfortable.
Caution
- Emotional Architecture Painting walls in vivid color without designing openings and shadow makes the color glare evenly, giving loudness instead of the intended stillness.
- International Style A white box alone misses the structure, free plan, industrial materials and social program, and ornament stripped without tuned proportion and detail reads as cheapness, leaving openings with no reason for their position.
Image prompt
Produce four original images that take their structure from Emotional Architecture (style, 1953-) and their accent from International Style (style, 1920s–1960s). ## What to make Make the kind of thing Emotional Architecture exists for: giving a white modern building strong feeling through local color and light, or making stillness in a hot climate house with courtyards and water. Choose one subject and hold it across all four. ## Structure comes from Emotional Architecture - A single large wall left without windows - Surfaces painted through in one flat color - Planes of shadow cast by direct sun - Mass read as sculpture rather than as building Composition: Close the outside with thick walls, opening only to courtyard and water. Type and lettering: Sink signage into the wall color and let shadow make it readable. ## Accent comes from International Style, used sparingly - Rectangular volumes - Glass planes - No ornament - The free plan Let one material quality come from it: Steel and concrete frame, white rendered planes, large sheets of glass. ## Colour and feeling Build the ground on #d9ccb3, carry the structure in #f46bb9 and #476fb5, and let a single accent come from #9ca3a5. These are read off real works, so a direction rather than a fixed palette. Feeling to carry: exhilaration, intimacy, calm, trust, futurity. ## Where they fight - Emotional Architecture and International Style both belong to Modern Architecture, so the difference is small. Push the roles further apart than feels comfortable. ## What goes wrong - Emotional Architecture: Painting walls in vivid color without designing openings and shadow makes the color glare evenly, giving loudness instead of the intended stillness. - International Style: A white box alone misses the structure, free plan, industrial materials and social program, and ornament stripped without tuned proportion and detail reads as cheapness, leaving openings with no reason for their position. ## Across the four Keep the roles fixed in all four. Vary the framing, the scale and the arrangement so the set shows what this pairing can do rather than four versions of one picture. ## Constraints - Do not imitate, reference or name any specific artist, studio, brand, character or copyrighted work. - Do not reproduce the composition of an existing work. - Produce original compositions in the general period languages described above.
Related entries
- Emotional Architecture 1953- / Style / Modern Architecture
Building that raises unbroken walls as sculptural mass and works on feeling through color, direct sun and stillness alone. Goeritz gave it the name in the 1953 manifesto he wrote for El Eco, against the functionalism of his day.
- International Style 1920s–1960s / Style / Modern Architecture
Strips ornament and aims at a universal architectural language crossing borders: the box, the free plan, steel, concrete and glass.
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