ABSTRACT
As Sir Henry Wotten put it, the third elementin Vitruvius’s description of architecture, following utility and sound structure, is delight. This is the most complex and diverse of all the components of architecture, for it involves how architecture engages all our senses, how it shapes our perception and enjoyment of (or discomfort with) our built environment. It is perhaps the area with which most people, architects and users alike, have difficulty. This is partly because delight involves, at every turn, subjective responses that differ from individual to individual, culture to culture. But perhaps even more important, for over half a century, from 1910 to 1965, Western architects and others around the world whom they influenced chose to believe that delight in architecture had no independent existence, that beauty resulted automatically through maximizing functionality and the clear expression of structure. Advocates of what came to be called International Modernism argued that the Vitruvian formula had been forever dispelled, so that commodity plus firmness equaled delight, or, as Bruno Taut wrote, architecture was the creation of “the perfect, and therefore most beautiful, efficiency.”1 Since about 1965, however, architects, critics, and historians have reversed this position, arguing again that there can be an independent quality of delight in architecture and that the most esteemed architecture endeavors to produce the greatest pleasure for the price, with function and durability being satisfied as well.
