Plato Research Paper

Often the most widely consumed by the general public, architectural renderings are oddly inconsequential in the actual realization of a physical building or structure. Clearly the most common way to engage with a piece of architecture is to simply be there, experiencing the space first hand as the designer intended it. However, when entering the beginning stages of the long architectural process clients understandably prefer to have some idea of what they are investing their time and money in before it’s constructed; enter architectural visualization. Whether it be in the form of a watercolor painting, floor plan, or photorealistic computer generated rendering, these images and drawings are a mere representation of a building that has yet …show more content…
Examining Plato’s arguments as to why representational art is cause for concern for the well-ordered soul and applying those arguments to various forms of architectural visualizations, this paper will attempt to conclude whether this sort of imagery is harmful to the soul or otherwise. Plato first brings to our attention the idea that at the very least, art is twice removed from the Forms, those which are good and pure, making them even more imperfect manifestations than that which we perceive as reality. To illustrate this Plato describes a man with a mirror. If said man were to show you a mirrored image of a tree or a piece of furniture you would not say that the man is capable of creating those things, merely he is capable of showing you images of imperfect iterations of the Forms of the object. The same can be said of a painting, you are not seeing the imperfect object derived from the Forms, you’re seeing an imperfect image of an imperfect object, which in turn leaves you so far from being able to grasp the true nature of the object that you risk being incapable of ever being able to fully grasp true nature of the object, which Plato deems