The aesthetics of time in architecture

Abstract

Time is a continuous changing factor, which effects the way architecture behaves and the way architecture looks. The connection between time and architecture form an inedible marking to the story of architecture. Time is an abstract factor, an intangible and invisible factor but which its effects are imprinted in our buildings. The way the building evolved and changed during the years will be experimented through images approached in dialectic of silence and presence. Architecture can be experienced in different ways, from writings to travel and though the medium which had made the most vital effect on the history of architecture is photography. It managed to capture spaces and transmit experiences. While architecture has been captured as an important subject since the invention of photography, it seems that on the other hand photography has also been an essential tool to represent and transmit architectural experiences in a way to create memorable and meaningful photographs. An image acts like an archival and recording device portraying the construction of the city, from what the city was in the past as to what it is today. It is within the author's objective to examine how photographs can preserve and consolidate our memory while the city is being subject to constant changes and development. The way architecture is being communicated to the viewer is essentially and of outmost importance, as most of the time we tend to look at photographs of the place before actually experiencing and visiting a space and translating the meaning of somewhere. The some, the details, the moments in time are remembered and need to be captured in order to transmit the language of architecture. The aim of the dissertation is to study the parallelism which lies between architecture and photography and how understanding a space as a process can help to create better visual architecture and articulate the illusions of time, commemorates history and showcase the optimal experience of spaces in the city rather than portraying just the photographic structure of architecture, giving it a non-artificial look. The image is important to relocate the viewer to a particular time and space and therefore bringing history back to life and portraying its people and its culture. The study will investigate how time, with particular emphasis on how the spaces around us changed, can link the viewer and the architects' thoughts. Another important topic which will be carried out is the relation between photography and architecture through design interventions and to predict future interventions in a way that images can help to translate architecture for a better design. Finally, the basic focus of the study is to try to create a new way of using photography, reusing this tool as a way to reinterpret spaces in the city of Valletta by documenting history through panoramic images showcasing the current condition of cultural landscapes and superimposing the old on the new serves as a metaphor for the author conceptual interests, debatable reflective of a past and the passage of time.