Aleksei Losev explained his idea of synthesis using examples from various fields of science – geometry, chemistry, astronomy. Synthesis is such a unity of opposites when they form a new quality without losing itself. In this place, Hegel used such words as «sublation» and «negation of negation.» The antithesis negates the thesis, and synthesis negates the antithesis. But Losev since his youth was inspired for creation – the highest synthesis.
So, following Losev, we will think of synthesis not as the «negation of negation,» but as creation (1), as the creation of a new (2), as the creation of a fundamentally new (3). A fundamentally new thing is born from the combination of the opposites – as different as possible, or at least from different, dissimilar, non-identical. After all, why synthesize the identical, if it is the same anyway?
The second of the principles under consideration was discovered already in the ancient philosophy. The whole is an organism in which it is impossible to replace one part with another without damage, because all parts bear the stamp of their integrity. The whole connects the parts, and each part reveals the whole, highlights its important facet.
In modern architecture, Frank Lloyd Wright came closest to this understanding: «In the realm of organic architecture human imagination must render the harsh language of structure into becomingly humane expressions of form instead of devising inanimate facades or rattling the bones of construction. Poetry of form is as necessary to great architecture as foliage is to the tree, blossoms to the plant, or flesh to the body» [46, 177]. «The word organic in architecture does not mean belonging to the animal or plant world,» Wright wrote. The word «organic», according to him, means that the whole is to the part as the part is to the whole [46, 181].
An organism is the opposite of a mechanism in which the scheme prevails over the «flesh» of the parts. The architectural composition, in turn, can be organic, or combinatorially mechanistic. An organic composition is born as a sculptural integrity, a sculpture that unfolds from its grain – an idea, and not as a result of spontaneous technical manipulations that can give the impression of being spectacular.
The third principle speaks about the disclosure of the inner in the outer, about the manifestation, germination of a semantic idea into a certain form, including a material one. The form expresses the meaning, but does not encode or encrypt it. Losev’s aesthetic system can be called the aesthetics of expression. In this phenomenon of the greater in the lesser, the ideal in the material, or, in Losev’s synonymous terminology, the eidetic in the meonal, symbols play a key role. Since the architectural form reveals meanings in three–dimensional shells–sculptures, it is also symbolic. A symbol is a meeting point of two realities – the semantic source and expressive elements. Their unity is revealed in the diverse figurative images of works of art and other human activities.
We will discuss the expressive semantic energy in architectural morphogenesis in a separate chapter below.
The author does not pretend to be exhaustive in covering the meaning-generating potentials of Losev’s philosophy for the tasks of architectural composition, and considers all the proposed work to be a full-fledged beginning that can open up into something more, and hopes that the given vector will resonate with architects, educators and thinkers who develop the philosophy of creativity for applied purposes.