The aesthetics of gravity

Beyond taste or fashion, there exists a lasting and common consensus for a perception of beauty linked to weight or weightlessness. This essay attempts to develop an understanding of different approaches to the issue of weight and weightlessness in architecture and civil engineering. In complex urban and programmatic settings, however, the question of gravity has to be integrated with many other issues, as exemplified by Albini and HeIg's La Rinascente department store in Rome.