Pantheon of Wonder

Essay

This is the 'Pantheon of Wonder', a journal with over 550+ essays on the poetic design of architecture, art, music, and meaning. It is a growing chronicle of over 25 years of research and innovation by Maria Lorena Lehman that helps you develop your creative projects for advanced beauty, function, and transcendent experience.

Strategy: Use Tension in Building Design to Imply Movement

by Maria Lorena Lehman

Image Strategies

Featured Image Takeaway Design Strategy:

Understand the way “tension” works in your design. The pushes and pulls of not only physical structure and forms can reveal quite beautiful elegance, but also the dynamics of special alignments and axis can bring metaphorical meanings to life. This building by Calatrava appears to be ready to take flight as it uses “tension” within its structure with alignment of axis to compose a motion which seems deliberate and ready to happen.

To Apply This Strategy, Ask Yourself:

HOW CAN I THINK OF “TENSION” BETWEEN MY DESIGN’S ARCHITECTURAL ELEMENTS TO IMPLY MOTION, TO GIVE SIGNIFICANCE, OR TO TRIGGER OCCUPANT EMOTION?

Image Caption: Quadracci Pavilion, Milwaukee Art Museum, by Santiago Calatrava

Image Credit: © o palsson | Flickr

RETURN TO JOURNAL

Continue the Conversation

If this essay stirred a question, illuminated an idea, or touched something deeper in your own creative journey, I invite you to continue the conversation.

Each month, I reserve a small number of private one-on-one conversations for readers seeking thoughtful guidance and deeper dialogue around creativity, architecture, music, meaning, purpose, or the work they feel called to bring into the world.

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• Ideas they wish to develop more deeply

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Warmly,

Maria Lorena Lehman

Founder of MLL ATELIER

Author of PANTHEON OF WONDER