When is a building "beautiful"? (Author: Andreas Hawlik) The question is as banal as it is difficult and at the same time multi-layered. The question of beauty is as old as our culture or even older. In the case of architecture, a sensory stimulus perceived with the eyes triggers a positive feeling in our subconscious emotional system - in rare cases, even happiness hormones can be released. This process only takes a fraction of a second and can no longer be significantly influenced by logical arguments. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. However, our cultural imprint gives rise to certain preferences within our culture and this allows us to recognise connections. If the form follows the function and the constructive logic, many viewers can recognise this logic and perceive the building as "beautiful." Order conveys security and stability - this is what we generally expect from a building. A sports arena should evoke different emotions than a museum or a school. There is a different "beautiful" for every function. Decorative elements are subject to the taste of the times, as the debate about the building on Michaelerplatz, which is over a hundred years old, shows us. For the subtle observer, however, the unsuccessful decoration of a post-war building with a colossal order of columns can be judged at least neutrally to positively by the majority of viewers. Functionless technoid design elements are just as unflattering. The often revered minimalism thrives on balanced proportions of volumes as well as materiality and texture (e.g. new buildings in the Museumsquartier). So when is a building beautiful? When it is in the right place at the right time. In any case, a beautiful building must be well looked after in order to remain beautiful. As a rule, few people find a desolate building beautiful - but even the aesthetics of derelict places now have a growing fan base...