Rereading the Concept of Centre

The concept of center plays a key role in the theories of art and architecture. This paper is a comparative study of this concept in the work of three distinguished theoreticians of art and architecture: Christian Norberg Shults, Christopher Alexander, Rudolf Arnheim. Although they are fundamentally different in their approach, they all place primary importance in this concept. Nevertheless, their reference to ‘center’ is widely varied in terms of both signification and significance. While at times, ‘center’ is taken to mean a geometrical property or the physical prominence of an architectural element, sometimes it refers to a principal cognitive role an element plays in the symbolic arrangement of an architectural composition. It is therefore essential to recognize the intended meaning of ‘center’ in the semantic hierarchy of each theoretical system.