Юрий Александрович Погудин
Manifesto of Dialectical Synthetism and Architecture
1. Architecture has come a huge way in its history, and now it is entering new frontiers. The 21st century witnesses a tsunami of architectural forms – such multifarious that it has become difficult to distinguish between beautiful and eye-catching, between noble and interesting. Already at the origins of modern architecture – a century ago – it led to the devaluation of the concept of beauty. But in its essence this concept has not disappeared. Without calling beauty by its name, every modern artist/designer/architect is looking for a form that is both meaningful and beautiful – in accordance with his creative credo.
2. The modern world is once again torn apart by spiritual and territorial contradictions. The spiritual identity of peoples and civilizations is not a uniform monolith, and it should not be one. Just as every person has his own life path – his destiny, so every nation and every country has its own destiny.
3. Art and architecture are those areas of creativity where people with different worldviews can be united in understanding and feeling beauty.
4. Many previous creative and architectural manifestos are characterized by negativism – as a negation of the previous major style. Thus, modernism dismisses the classics (remaining connected with it in a sense of proportions), and parametricism dismisses modernism. Dialectical architecture considers the history of forms and their meanings as a struggle and unity of opposites. In achieving such unity, synthesis becomes the key category.
5. It is possible to apply the dialectical triad to the construction of geometric forms, and consider forms and their parts and qualities within an architectural composition as theses, antitheses and syntheses.
