Honesty and Deception
Honesty and deception are controversial in the architectural field. The definition of honesty differs among architects and the general public. For some individuals, honesty is defined depending on the reality of the material used while for others honesty is on the way the shape of a building is used to pass information. For other individuals honesty in architecture lies in the reason behind the shape or material used to build a house. Defining an architectural structure as being honest, the structure does not give a false presentation of what it is and should give a coherent representation of the current spirit of modernization. According to Korydon Smith, deception is evident in several works of art and can be presented in three ways; painting a building to present what it is not, the presentation of an untrue mode of a building, and the use of machine-made ornaments. Architecture as a work of art has a way to use deceptive procedures without necessarily breaking the customs of society.
Deception by machine-made ornaments is the most common among the architectural deceptions. Usually, ornaments are respected for being works of the hands, but when machines come in, the value disappears. The making of ornaments can be related to the collection of diamonds (Smith, p.75, 2013). The value of diamond jewelry is set according to the time spend before finding the diamond. Similarly, the value of an ornament is measured using the time that the ornament will take before being cut. However, deception can happen both on the diamond seller and the ornament seller. To notice a duplicate diamond or machine-made ornaments, tests are done by close examination by the experienced individuals.
The other form of deception in the architectural field is the use of painted material that does not represent the real nature of the material. For example, several houses made of wood will be painted to appear as if the houses are built using bricks (Goodstadt, p.34, 2018). The deception could be deliberate but does not involve the breaking of any societal norms concerning honesty. The response from such events has been positive with quite a good number believing that such happenings are motivated by creativity (Curić, p.30, 2018). The Stealthy Saltboxes, which were electric substations, appeared like English estates and not utility houses. However, the accumulation of such deceptions will only cause a problem in that; it would become difficult to obtain original products.
The other theory of architectural deception is the use of modes of buildings to represent what the building should represent. Intelligent individuals can only recognize the secrets hidden behind specific building structures. However, the architect behind the several structures is not obliged to use, or not use the structures (Blahut, p.103, 2015). The recipients of the deception given by a particular structure are not bound to complain about the structures, and thus the architect is at liberty of using any structure. An example of a structure that could be seen as a form of deception is the Kelvedon Hatch in Essex America, which acts as a museum but was initially made for war purposes.
In sum, architecture faces cases of dishonesty just like any other profession. The deception found in the field comes in three ways: the use of modes of structure to give a false impression, the use of painted pictures to represent higher quality products and the use of machine-made ornaments instead of the hand-made ornaments.