Good Architecture: Creativity and Coherence

Loro A.V. · Veritas (2026) · DOI: 10.4067/s0718-92732026000100007

Resumen

The essay examines what good architecture can mean from an epistemological perspective, taking as its axis the relationship between mind and world in the design process. Drawing on the debate between Donald Davidson and John McDowell on coherentism, conceptual experience, and triangulation, it proposes understanding the architectural project as a system of epistemic intermediaries that articulate perception, sensation, and meaning in the configuration of space. The article distinguishes two modes of operation of these bridges: negative epistemic intermediaries, focused on representational content, empirical evidence, and behaviour; and positive epistemic intermediaries, oriented toward atmospheres, lived experience, and ways of inhabiting. Creativity—together with imagination and intuition—is conceived as an operation on non truth-bound states that generate spatial hypotheses subjected to tests of internal and external coherence. The essay concludes that good architecture is not reducible to formal novelty or mere efficiency, but emerges when such intermediaries make it possible to articulate, in a critical and coherent way, knowledge, experience, and responsibility in the production of space that is fully habitable, culturally situated, and ethically accountable for its inhabitants. © (2026), (Pontificio Seminario Mayor San Rafael). All rights reserved.

Instituciones: Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas