Texture+Architecture

//**What is the importance of texture in Architecture / Urban Plannig?**//

When you walk into a space, whether or not you are consciously aware of it, chances are you are highly affected by the texture of that space. As an abstract and subjective concept, texture is rather under-emphasized in architecture schools. Texture plays a dual role in architecture: it expresses something of the quality of materials, and it gives a particular quality to light. Although one absorbs both qualities simultaneously by eye, the first has tactile, the second visual associations. Specific tactile textures are peculiar to every material by virtue of its manufacture or natural composition, but they may be altered to produce a variety of expressive qualities. Visual textures are produced by the patterns given to the lighting of the surface both through the way the materials are worked and through the way they are employed in building. Like all patterns, visual textures create associations of movement, giving rhythm to the surface. A single texture is rarely employed in building. The variety of materials and treatments typically produces a complex of textures that must be composed and harmonized like the forms and spaces of architecture into a consistent expressive whole.

