Life is a controversy waiting for synthesis

A. F. Losev

Dedicated to my family:

my wife Zoe and daughter Taya,

my mother Lyudmila, my father Alexander

and my sister Nina

Preface to the English edition

Dear readers, the translation of this book was performed by a friend of our family, Anna Kanunnikova. I am deeply grateful to her for the work.

The author hopes that the proposed direction will contribute to new architectural searches and discoveries.

September 14, 2025

Preface

Dear readers, I hope that this book will not only be read by you, but also will help you to create expressive architectural compositions.

Realities of the world that is changing before our eyes give rise to new requirements to competences of modern specialists. The active implementation of neural networks in the creative work of artists, designers, and architects brings linguistic and verbal thinking into focus, with its diverse connections with two-dimensional and three-dimensional forms. The connection between words and forms is the point that brings forth the results of the co–creation of human and artificial intelligence. It is in this vein that the author has been conducting research for more than 9 years, the results of which are presented in this book. It outlines the basic principles of communication between verbal/conceptual and figurative/spatial forms of thought. In our Archineo studio, students learn to create new architectural forms using a complex verbal and visual method in a series of certain exercises. A word and an image are two wings. A word is an impulse to create an image. The "clip consumption" of visual content should be replaced with the development of conceptual thinking in its connection with images, space and form. This is the only way a thinking creator can avoid becoming a mere appendage to neural networks, but enter into a co-creative resonance with them. Neural networks will enhance his creative potential, and the person will unlock their advanced capabilities.

The set of reflections in these essays provides a theoretical basis for the harmonious co-creation of human and artificial intelligence in the field of innovative architectural shape generation (form creation, morphogenesis). This book contains no blueprints for using neural networks, but there is something more: it highlights a number of issues on the use of verbal and philosophical methods of thinking in architectural morphogenesis, which is of practical importance both in independent creative search and in the generation of concepts in neural networks.

The author first conceived the idea of combining philosophy and architecture while studying at the St. Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering at the Faculty of Architecture. While studying the basics of spatial composition, the history of fine arts and architecture, I first came across the early works of the great Russian philosopher Aleksei Fyodorovich Losev. The term paper in philosophy titled "Architecture as a Subject of Philosophy" (2001) marked the beginning of essays on architectural composition. In the following five years, the preliminary general theoretical part, "The Dialectic of Architecture" (2006), was written. After a few years, thanks to the support of Viktor Petrovich Troitskiy, a senior researcher at the Losev House¹, I continued to develop a system of architectural propaedeutics, both theoretical and practical, based on the results of architectural design lessons that I have been giving for more than three years. The proposed methodological principles are applied by my students in their architectural and artistic projects (examples are presented in the final section). Some of them became winners in architectural categories of creative contests for children and youth.

The theoretical core of the book consists of three publications on methods of architectural morphogenesis, published in the St. Petersburg magazine Credo New in 2022-2023.

I deeply and cordially thank my mother Lyudmila, who supports my endeavors; my father Alexander – for helping me in forming my architectural and philosophical library; Uncle Vyacheslav – for my first drawing lessons when I was 2 years old; Grandfather Ivan – for collecting me after classes in art school; Uncle Sergei – for intellectual development; my wife Zoya – for constructive criticism and creative like-mindedness; Viktor Petrovich Troitsky – for wise mentoring and support in the development of the dialectical concept of architectural propaedeutics based on the principles of philosophy and aesthetics of Aleksei Fyodorovich Losev, Sergey Petrovich Ivanenkov – editor-in-chief of Credo New magazine – for help in publishing my articles on architecture; Nikolai Petrovich Pyatakhin, the artist and teacher of drawing in St. Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering – for kindness and consistency in the profound mastering of live freehand drawing; Aleksei Dudin, the rector of the Church of the Holy Great Prince Vladimir, Equal of the Apostles in Kommunar Town of the Gatchinsky District, the Leningrad Region, and priest Constantine Slepinin – for prayer support; all the teachers who taught me in Saint Petersburg Gymnasium School No. 114, Saint Petersburg Georgy Sviridov Art School No. 1, Saint Petersburg Interregional Centre (College) of the Ministry of Labour of Russia at the Design faculty, St. Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering at the architectural faculty; my students – for the fruitful study and excellent works.

I would be grateful for the feedback and comments that can be sent by email:

yuripogudin@archineo.ru

Have a co-creative reading! Yuri Pogudin,

July 24, 2023

Introduction

One day, the author wrote such a comment to a post about an architectural biennale²: "We can consider the history of modern architecture as a struggle against the peripter. First, the pediment was cut off, and we got a flat roof. The abolition of symmetry gave a free plan and dynamics. The separation from the base gave the "house on pillars". Then we see two parallel processes: identification (walls, wall and roof, etc.) in curvilinear structures and division (walls, wall and roof, etc.) into free elements. The third stage is pixelation: architecture turns into a screen, a mirror, and performance. And electronic baroque. The path of form: from the Egyptian Pyramid to virtual reality."

This somewhat caricatured description reveals categoriality as the basis of architecture: such things as roofs and walls and such qualities as symmetry and transparency are substantive categories for architecture in the same way, as the concepts of finite and infinite, subjective and objective, etc. are for philosophy. Just as a philosopher performs intellectual actions of analysis and synthesis with abstract concepts, so an architect performs visual and material actions with volumetric and spatial forms and their qualities. When Zaha Hadid identified the floor and the wall in the interior through curvilinear plasticity at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, it was a new action, it was a new categorial step.

Therefore, architecture can be called a full-fledged philosophy of form, or, if it is more familiar, "philosophy in stone," although it is possible that after a while, we will see the architecture that structures space not with matter, but with force fields. Philosophy, in turn, is the architecture of concepts, the world view of the world creation. The thought of a philosopher connects words–bricks, the thought of an architect – forms, which are concepts and images at the same time.

The thirst for form creation is inherent in people in general, just as the thirst for new music is inherent in composers. The concept of form is integral, and history is the development of forms. The development of meanings stands behind the development of forms. How exactly does a particular form relate to the meaning? What meaning and in what manner does it convey? Precisely these forms flourish in every epoch. And looking at the forms of different epochs and peoples, we can feel for ourselves how different the ideas behind them are. The approach of art experts to appreciate the art of all countries and peoples in the same manner does not devalue the inherent desire of people to find the meaning of life associated with a single Truth. The choice of a world view or religion becomes a choice of an external form, environment, and lifestyle. Aleksei Losev would use here the concept of "myth" – as a historical unity of views, lifestyle of people and the entire created environment.

In the search for new volumetric and spatial compositions, architecture turns to nature and technology, science and art, music and painting, and, of course, philosophy. The achievements of philosophy do not have a generally binding mathematical compulsion, and the choice of philosophical teaching consonant with oneself may in many ways have the character of an aesthetic preference. Thus, the doctrine of the synthesis of opposites in dialectical philosophies seems to the author more beautiful (and therefore more logical) than fixing binary oppositions without resolving their opposition. The apotheosis of this approach was the aphorism of fr. Pavel Florensky: "Rublev's Trinity exists; therefore God exists." In moments of doubt about religious faith, one can consider figure skating: how can such beauty come from nowhere and go nowhere? And Aleksei Losev called his philosophy a "ballet of categories." Logic and beauty, meaning and form are mysteriously interconnected.

Therefore, in the search for architectural beauty and expressiveness, it is logical to turn to philosophy and aesthetics as a storehouse of thought, its constructions, its structurality and movement. The deepest source of this kind is the philosophy of Aleksei Fyodorovich Losev, which has melted down into a new synthesis, a new fusion of ancient, medieval, New European German and Russian Christian philosophy.

The ideas and principles of A. Losev's philosophy can become living seeds for new branches of modern architectural propaedeutics. The author of this book, to the best of his ability, has developed the semantic unity of some of these principles with the concepts of architectural propaedeutics. This work resulted in essays on applied architectural aesthetics – a pedagogical system of dialectical architectural form generation for volumetric and spatial compositions.

A textbook on architectural modeling from the Ural State Academy of Architecture and Art , in our opinion, correctly describes the current situation in architecture: "Somehow, the opinion has prevailed that the impending decline of architecture is manifested only in the "lacking skill" of architects. Increasing this skill in all possible ways is seen as a counteraction to this process. It may go as far as recognition and idealization of the results of the work of a limited group of specialists.

Considering the example of the most important historical changes in architecture, one can see that they were associated not with the loss of craftsmanship, but with the "devaluation of stylistic forms." In this way, the Renaissance revalued the Gothic, the 19^th century – the classics, the beginning of our [20 – Yu. P.] century – eclecticism, and then Art Nouveau. Rather, the loss of craftsmanship itself was a consequence of the devaluation of the architectural form. It turns out that the "sacred goal", for which mastery strives, has disappeared.

The devaluation is most clearly expressed in the "feeling of sham randomness of architectural forms.” Sham randomness can in no way convince of its comprehensive justification and realism. Architectural form, therefore, is not just geometry, mass, space, substance, but "an alloy of material with symbolic content, outlined by morphological contours of the form." The form "sweeps along the movements of both our body and our spirit." The truthfulness and organicity of the form are rooted in our consciousness. Spirit and material must be fused together by the meaning. For example, in some objects, the architectural form and material literally coincide, but all this engineering precision does not express any meaning and does not entail any emotions.

When we see in a form only a historical style, only a technical or functional calculation, only the conventionality of language or the irony of the author, we will sooner or later decipher its meaning. However, this meaning is addressed to something different than this form as such. Instead of "referring the viewer to inexhaustible semantic contexts, the form loses its vitality, remaining a conventional sign." <…>

"The fate of the entire architectural culture depends on whether we manage to find a way of thinking that complements scientific analysis and counterposes the diversity of subjective artistic creation to synthesis." [70].

An expressive architectural form, in its inherent meanings, outgrows itself, becoming an intentional existential symbol. Peter Zumthor put it this way: "I did my first two buildings.… It was terrible. I could hear the architectural discussion of the time in my buildings. This was the last time that this should happen to me.... So what is this being myself? It is interesting that in these buildings, which gave me this headache, heart ache, there were things I liked, such as things that did not come from a magazine or from a discussion that I can talk about with somebody. Rather, this is me!" [Quoted after: 58].

The history goes on, and people continue to create. They continue to create architecture as well. New styles replace old ones. Each major style is characterized by a special type of composition. Let's look at the main ones.