As Philip Johnson has made it clear to us students of architecture: beauty is subjective, what is beautiful to one is pretty ugly to someone else, de gustibus est disputandum. True words from someone who called architects high class whores. According to the ancient Greek, the world is divided into chaos or “that which has not taken form yet”, versus cosmos: “the world perceived as a beautiful well-balanced jewel”. As if god-the-architect had unrealised plans. This is what Alberti thought of this principal:

“Beauty is that reasoned harmony of all the parts within a body, so that nothing may be added, taken away, or altered, but for the worse. It is a great and holy matter; all our resources of skill and ingenuity will be taxed in achieving it; and rarely is it granted, even to nature herself, to produce anything that is entirely complete and perfect in every respect.”

The Japanese architect Arata Isozaki had an original approach towards beauty in designing one of his first building’s: the Fukuoka bank building. As a young architect, he wanted to make sure that everyone perceived his building as ugly. Come to think of it, it is a rather clever approach of Isozaki using ugliness as a crutch and avoiding any misconceptions on the discussion of the building. This makes you wonder how ugly can a design become? The question obviously is as difficult as its opposite.