Honesty & Deception
Honesty can be defined as the expose of raw materials without much extra treatment and cover it’s real structure. For deception, it means the hide of materials, to cover the weakness of the structure. Nowadays, architecture tends to be more honesty, which it tends to more adaptive reusing the heritage structure to provide a new meaning to the building. Nonetheless, some of the contemporary architecture still remain deception because of the plaster layer, ornaments and facades.
John Ruskin from the article “The Lamp of Truth”, been introduce “As, whatever is pretend, it is wrong”. This is because he declaimed that Architectural Deceits are broadly to be considered under three heads; “First, the suggestion of a mode of structure or support, other than the true one; Second, the painting of surfaces to represent some other material than that of which they actually consist; Third, The use of cast or machine-made ornaments of any kind”. He also declaimed that all cast and machine work is dishonest.
From Viollet-Leduc “Originality is imposible apart from truth” theory is more to import new ideal forms with functionality materials to a existing building. He believes that the exterior of the building should equally reflect to the construction of the building.
For Fil Hearn, “Truth to the Medium: Using Materials”, He declaimed to be strongly accepting the new materials to perform various structural tasks.
Ruskin, Viollet and Hearn can be conclude with they all agree with the truth of materials.
One of the best to represent honesty architecture in Local Malaysia is from Ng Seksan. He respects the old historical building by adding a new structure for a new program to ongoing on the building. Honesty, which means the expose of structure materials can help to prevent some lacking of materials which can cause the structure fail. Honesty been declaimed to be the best policy.
In the other hand, deception also important for the society. On of the best example for deception is from Architect Zaha Hadid. Her works is always impress by its organic form. The materials are mostly need to customized from the industry and is very modernistic. It is more to express the aesthetic value than functionality. As we know that deceptive will be more easy to construct and help to reduce the rate of using non- renewable resources than renewable resource.
In conclusion, I believe that honesty is more to form follow function but deception is function follow the form. There is no a specific right or wrong for honesty and deception. As long as it is function-able when comes to choosing the materials.
