Cycle

The scale of an object is vital to understanding the meaning of it, regardless the meaning of it is to be built and produced, or looking at something in a historical/ and/or social context. In Ancient Egypt, scale played a very important role in their architecture. The Temple of Amon at Karnak is very large and visually heavy, instilling a fear of the deities in the people as well as keeping out those who were not supposed to enter. The pyramids at Giza “were the most visible part of extensive surrounding funeral complexes” (Roth 2007), and definitely rise above the desert environment. For the pharaohs having them built, it was a competition of whose pyramid was larger, since larger scale meant greater power during his reign.

An important part of any design is unity. Lacking this attribute, a design often lacks in firmness, commodity, and delight. When parts are put together correctly, their whole can be greater than the sum of their parts. Scale plays into unity. In a design, if different attributes have different scales, the unity is greatly affected, or may become nonexistent. Aristotle, in his Poetics discusses this subject in regards to poems and plays, but it applies just as well to other fields: “… a beautiful object, whether it be a living organism or any whole composed of parts, must not only have an orderly arrangement of parts, but be of a certain magnitude and order; for beauty depends on magnitude and order. Hence, a very small animal organism cannot be beautiful; for the view of it is confused, the object being seen in an almost imperceptible moment of time. Nor again, can one of vast size be beautiful; for the eye cannot take it in all at once, the unity and sense of the whole is lost for the spectator; as for the instance if there were one a thousand miles long.” (Aristotle 2007)


A section drawing shows the inside of an object. A section is also, simply, a portion of something. A place can be sectioned off, as were the tombs of Ancient Egyptian pharaohs. Tombs consisted of a “miniature, palace-like series of room chambers”(Roth 2007), in which every thing had its own section, and place. The body of the pharaoh had its section of the tomb, while implements for the afterlife had their section. If servants or a wife of the pharaoh is buried with him, those people have their section of the tomb.

In studio, we have been working with walls, which are a form of a boundary. The Ancient Egyptians used the Nile, their source of life, as a boundary between life and death. There, “Across from the temples, on the west bank of the Nile, beyond which the sun wet, tombs were built at the edge of the cliffs” (Roth 2007). The pyramids were designed so that the sun would travel from the top down the four sides, to the four corners of the earth, or the earth’s boundaries.


We have been drawing vignettes for a couple of classes. Vignettes can capture a literal scene in a coffee shop or an abstract feeling from a story. They capture small moments in time, often using a gathering of objects. When uncovering ruins, groupings of objects tell archaeologists a great deal, such as “grave goods and regalia for use in the next world” (Roth 2007) found in Egyptian tombs.

All designs must have unity. An important part of unity is scale. A section drawing can help to understand a design, and a design may have sections for different things and purposes. There are boundaries inferred in these sections between people and things, especially if there is a wall sectioning off the spaces. A vignette captures a grouping of objects, often with some sort of unity between them. There is a cycle among these words, just as there is a cycle in all of life.

Works Cited:

Aristotle, trans: S.H. Butcher. (2007). Poetics, Retrieved Feb 11, 2009, from http://books.google.com/books?id=EYuJEx4GKncC&pg=PR3&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=0_0#PPR9,M1

Roth, Leland, M. (2007). Understanding Architecture: Its Elements, History, and Meaning. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press.