Does Humos - Belong in architecturare?

Abstract

If the so called "exact" sciences are also product of human activity - and being Man a profoundly subjective creature - architecture cannot be a product of an exclusive rational pragmatism. Architecture is born from the confrontation between reason and indetermination. This study aims to demonstrate how an extremely imprecise agent like humor can participate in the defi nition of architectural design. Architecture is a communicative and symbolic phenomenon of intellectual interpretation. The playful process and nature of design resembles in some ways that of a game. This exploration dialogues with dissimilar conditions and factors, and is assembled the voice of the architect ultimately evolving to form a project. The architect develops a work of analysis and enunciation based on an objectivity and rationality held hostage to his understanding/intelligence/judgment. Consciously, the architect can give more liberty to empiric instruments balancing them with the "scientifi c" knowledge. Humor is an important indeterminable knowledge and, consequently, a powerful design tool. Twenty fi ve architectural works are studied with the purpose of validating humor in our fi eld. The architects, the works and the humor applications are all different, inevitably producing a wide-range of results.