ABSTRACT

This chapter describes 'the dominance of a persistent aesthetic 'paradigm" in the history of art, the discourse on architecture and contemporary architectural production. It argues that aesthetic persistence in the concept of 'form' and sensible surface which characterizes a large part of post-modern, Deconstructivist and contemporary architectural production has probably come to a dead end regarding the possibility of architecture articulating a world of meaning. The consolidation of the aesthetic paradigm in architecture was realised mainly within the framework of the post-modern era. A 'paradigm change' from formal aesthetics to spatial ethics would perhaps be a more appropriate framework for meeting those demands. The revival of eclecticism in the context of post-modernism laid the foundations for the emergence of what is called as the aesthetic paradigm; namely, an approach to architectural design which is primarily interested in the aesthetic and 'communicational' attributes of the work's form, neglecting its ethical consequences.