ABSTRACT
Caricature is a term used to describe an exaggeration, a skillfully stretched and intentionally deformed alteration of a familiar form. While caricature is associated with the resulting sketch and its contextual meaning, the art of caricature involves the forces of deformation and their connotative value. In its generative stage, caricature touches one of architectural design’s deepest desires: to build life into lifeless forms. In its manifold implications, caricature touches many of architecture’s most deeply embedded assumptions about its existence: the struggle of architectural form to stand out, inspire, and identify itself. Traditionally the struggle of architecture has been to express its form through its function without disturbing the balance between the two. Forms convey strong visual messages that are intrinsically associated with their formal characteristics. What makes a caricature so polemic for architects is that the modern movement has imposed a strong concern towards the dominance of form. The importance of form in architecture, as opposed to function and content, has the advantage of taking into account the idiosyncratic links of architecture to its major relative, art. The disadvantage, however, is that formalism, among Modern theorists, has connotations of being too iconolatric, superficial, and conformist. As a consequence, formalism has always been regarded suspiciously as combining the icons of historical architecture and technological development at a surface level.
