solids and cavities in architecture

Through observing we offer to our perception the reality, but our brain manages to experience these images again by re-creating them, based on already known forms.Observing buildings, we go through the same process, that of re-construction .We observe an object, get a certain impression, an impression that derives from an understanding process in which our brain makes us believe that we have seen that object, not carefully, but we relate it to another one of that kind.Looking for more details we replace that image with the real one.A similar process may go through the mind of an architect, who firstly decides what is about to do through a rough sketch, and than replaces this template images with other creation of his/her own imagination.

This thinking and creating process requires for the architect to work with solids as the main element.Different combinations of these solids create architectural spaces. The architect decides for the way through which the solid and cavity functions, by working with structural forms or the cavity itself, perceived as an empty space.The constructing process in this case would not be as assembling materials in a structure, but it would consist in removing material from a mass.

Different concepts of this idea were established in the characteristics of two architectural periods as well. In the Gothic period the forms were putted together to function as parts of sharp pointed structures. On the other hand, during the Renaissance period the vertical elements converted into horizontal ones and the cavity was what the architects worked with.

Great architectural works were left behind from both these periods and it can not be chosen between the two methods which is the most effective ones. The architect chooses which one goes along with the idea and best accomplishes the requirements, or even creates another method of working with solids and cavities.

The relationship between solids and cavities in architecture create the conditions so that the building will be experienced with everything that it offers,because of the fact that the two dimensional sizes convert into proportions of the foreground as openings with depth.

To ''read'' the spaces created in architectural works, a division is made between the elements that create solids and cavities.There are horizontal and vertical elements,openings, formal and spatial elements.