Beautiful Architecture

People eat, sleep, entertain themselves, meet biological needs within physical structures. These structures could be student hostels, barracks, small flats, large flats, bungalows. Each of these have very different architectures. It does not mean that students cannot live in flats, or houses; or that families cannot live in hostels. Its neither convenient, nor efficient. These different architectures cater to groups that have different "processing" needs.

Aircraft hangars and automobile service stations are both meant for maintenance. The "processing" needs are different. Their architecture differs radically; and it is not a matter of scale.

Airports and bus terminals both cater to the transportation of people. The "processing" needs are different. Their architectures are different.

You can operate business establishments and godowns in a palace. Bhagirath Palace is an example. The original architecture was designed for a different purpose. By all accounts it was beautiful. Definitely not beautiful now.

In addition to "processing" needs, there is the matter of values. Design is about trade-offs.Values are used to decide trade-offs. Values decide what is beautiful and what is not. In a residence where should the toilet be? Some three decades ago, I have seen toilets that were separate from the main residence. It reflects a value system. In Chickpet, which is a dense business plus residential area, I have seen a murrah buffalo in the front yard of a multi-storey building. It reflects a value system.

Architects who design buildings must understand both the "processing" needs and the value needs of their customers. Buildings that make the "processing" pleasurable and efficient and meet the values of the customer, have an architecture that is beautiful.

Software architects must understand the "processing" needs of the problem domain. They must also understand the values of good software engineering, the values of stake holders, and the tension between these. To the extent that architecture satisfies the "resulting balance point" of these tensions, it can be said to be beautiful.

An Architectural Story
New Delhi used to have a number of hutments. These were very near the very impressive buildings, on Raisina Hill, that were designed by Lutyens. The hutments were speedily constructed during World War II. They were meant to be temporary and to be torn down after the war. They were shabby, but met the "resulting balance point" at that point in time. Four decades later, most of them were still in use as government offices and family residences. They were hard to live in and hard to work in. Definitely not beautiful.

Some code that I have seen remind me of  "hutment" architecture.