Verticality and its manifestation in architecture: an examination of it's symbolism and language used

Abstract

Since the beginning of human civilization verticality had been used consciously or unconsciously to represent the social hierarchy of a particular society. This consists of social, religious, political and economic aspects according to the level of beliefs and thoughts within that given society. This hierarchy is expressed through man's creations of the built environment. Architecture produces the built environment for people. They live in it and work in it. That is the total experience, physical and psychological, that man faces. The symbolism of verticality evolve to establish the boundaries of social hierarchy for a given society. Height is a quantitative property for the given object because it is tangible and measurable. The intangible property that height contains, can be identified as the verticality. Man has to experience it through his own emotional and aesthetic measures. These measures are established by the expressive qualities produced by the built environment. At the same time when we create any architectural object verticality must be the strongest aspect to symbolize its hidden meaning through the expressive qualities which it contains. These expressive qualities make some kind of emotional changes as well as the behavior patterns of human beings. Today we are experiencing more and more verticality in our urban areas. The correct manifestation of verticality for the exact symbolic communication is vital because otherwise it will cause a negative type of emotion which creates difficulties and discomforting achieving required life goals of human beings mainly through behavior patterns within the city realm. It also affects to the nature of the city growths a memorable and cultural city.