Makovecz Centre and Archives, Budapest, September 30, 2023
According to Vitruvius, architectural styles spring from proportions of human body. This idea has a much deeper meaning than previously thought. Every mental process relies on a certain subsystem of bodily organs. And architecture of each epoch is derived from the shape of those organs of human body which are associated with the mental processes prevalent in that epoch.
For example, the rationalist Enlightenment created Neo-classicism, derived from the forms of the central nervous system. The consumerist-materialist Baroque recalls the organs of the digestive system. Conservative absolutism takes inspiration from the spherical shapes of bones. Skyscrapers grew up with democracy because they are an image of the backbone, which symbolizes free individuality. The Gothic church imitates the rib cage, and rosettes appear with the romanticism of courtly love, just as colour is associated with courtship and sexuality in nature.
Organic architecture is not just any building resembling living shapes. Architects of all ages have unconsciously incorporated into their buildings precisely those structural elements from living nature which are associated with the mentality typical of their cultural epoch. In a deeper sense, therefore, all architecture is organic.
