Solids and Cavities in Architecture

Architecture is an art that on first glance is given to us by visual observation. Something that is mistaken often is that we put focus only on the part of the design that is there (solids) and we forget how important the parts that are missing (cavities) are.

The way we look at designs and sketch our ideas is more important than we are aware of. There’s solid-minded architects and cavity-minded architects. This depends on the way the architect chooses to start a design, from the solid part or the spaces. For example, in some cathedrals the detail and uniqueness of the design is focused on the mass solid part (Gothic Architecture), in some others it is focused on the big spaces on the interior of the cathedral (Renaissance Period).

Frank Lloyd Wright shows a perfect example on Falling Water about the ways to achieve harmony between them two, and now to use them as just a vast ornament, which has failed a lot of times previously when other architects have tried to achieve it. Frank Lloyd Wright on his design shows the most important and beautiful ornament that other architects have misses: nature.

This class in my opinion was one of the most important ones because it connected really close with the studio designs that we make. For example in our two cubes we had two different main focuses, because in the first cube we had to think about the cavities we were going to create from the amount of Styrofoam that we carved and in the second cube we had to design with solids around cavities. In the current studio design we also have to put a lot of thinking when it comes to solids and cavities and the way we are going to portray them in our design.

I think learning more about the importance of solids and cavities will benefit us a lot even in the future projects and throughout our Architecture journey because it is one of the most crucial parts while designing.