Circle of Form

Abstract

Teaching aesthetics belongs to one of the most flourishing part in education. The variety of methods, terminology and tradition differs from country to country, school to school and from person to person. The ability to make aesthetic judgments which are coherent is difficult because, we don’t have a common professional language like in mathematics, colour and music. The result is a weaker professionalism in the aesthetic competences compared to the professionalism and competences in other areas. A research project [1] on contrasts or opposites in form investigated the phenomenon in the fields of architecture, design, art, art theory, and perception. It was then obvious in related areas to look for systems or models which organized opposites. The colour system has the same fundamental dualistic structure based on complementary colours, on light and dark (black and white), cold and warm. Inspired by this model, and using the knowledge gathered from the other areas, especially perception psychology, it showed to be a possible way to organize contrasts in form, a system of 4 different opposites, geometric, organic, mass and structure: The Circle of Form.