5. The Architect at Work
• All creative people, all professionals, whatever their field of
activity, have to make decisions.
• LOCATIONAL ANALYSIS- putting things in the most appropriate
places
• Architect- Spatial ability
Capacity for visualizing
Generating 3D forms of buildings, interior spaces
6. • 4 distinct ways of generating 3D forms in chronological order of
application
PRAGMATIC
ICONIC
ANALOGIC
CANONIC
7. PRAGMATIC DESIGN
• Highly practical view of the task- by trial and error
• The earliest way of building but we still use it in certain circumstances-
particularly when we are trying to find the ways in which new materials
may be used.
• Picking up a flint and using it as a tool
• Neolithic man learned to recognize that a certain flint could be used as a
scraper, another as a chopper, a third as an axe and so on.
• Finding suitable tools and weapons and working them until they are right.
8. • He was a hunter; his hunting expeditions took
him far away from home.
• He needed rest and sleep.
• He had to protect himself from wild animals,
climatic elements: so he took to building shelters.
9. • Remains of these sites have been
excavated in various parts of Europe.
• Mammoth hunters’ tents- small stones,
spindly trees, bones, tusks and skins of
mammoths; i.e. all that was left after the
edible parts had been consumed.
11. • The hunters needed more
than that- climate could be
extremely inhospitable, so
they needed a further
modification of the
physical climate.
12. • The basic reason for the building was to modify the given climate
as offered by wild nature so that certain human activities could be
carried out conveniently and in comfort.
• A reconciliation between man’s needs and the climate as for
building
• The building also will modify and be modified by certain cultural
climates- social, political, economic, moral, aesthetic and so on.
• The mammoth-hunters’ tent
suggests that the first way of
achieving three dimensional built
form was by trial and error,
taking the available materials
and putting them together in a
way which seemed to work.
13. • Diffusionist view- Gordon Childe (1925)
Each technique-whether of tool or weapon making, of house
building or of making works of art- originated in a particular place, at
a particular time and was spread by successive cultural contacts over
the earth’s surface.
14. • Structuralist view- Levi Strauss (1963)
Each technique was discovered many times, in many different places,
because the human brain, given certain problems to solve with
comparable resources, tends to work in characteristic ways which
determine the kinds of solutions it is likely to generate.
Particular building forms have been repeated in particular cultures.
The climate which has to be controlled and the resources available for
controlling it remain substantially the same for long periods.
Eg: The great black tents of the Arabs and the Eskimo’s igloo.
Every member of the tribe knows, or knew, how to build an igloo.
Heat sources inside further modify the climate.
15. • In each case a particular way of building
makes effective use of the available
resources, in terms of stone, plant or
vegetable matter, hair, skin and so on,
to effect certain modifications of the
given climate.
• The house forms in cold climates are
designed as far as possible to conserve
heat, but in warm countries structures
tend to be open.
16. ICONIC DESIGN
• The match between a climate to be controlled and the resources
available for its control would be sufficient justification in itself for
repetition of a house form once it has been proved to work.
• House form and pattern of
life become adjusted to each
other.
• A number of families may
cluster and link their igloos
together so that social
interactions are possible
throughout the long winter.
17. • In Borneo and in certain parts of
Polynesia the whole tribe may live
together in a long-house
• The black tent of the Arabs is designed
with separate accommodation for men
and women.
• There is mutual adaptation between
house-form and pattern of living.
18. • A craftsman spends long years acquiring the skills and aptitudes of
his craft, learning the nature of his materials, care for his tools and
so on.
19. • Once he has become a master of his craft these traditional ways will be
built deep into his consciousness; he will have acquired patterns of
coordination between hand, eye and brain which he will not wish to
abandon;
• His interest will be in passing on these secrets to another generation.
20. • Given this tendency for individual craft s to remain fairly constant, there
will be strong pressures for the entire pattern of building to remain
constant too.
21. • Some tribes have legends which describe the fabled origin of some
building form.
• Others have work songs which describe the materials one should
search for, where to find them, how to shape them, how to put
them together and so on- thus representing the first formalized
design process.
22. • A way of building is built deep
into the tribal consciousness.
• Each member of the tribe has
a fixed mental image of what
a house should be like-
ICONIC DESIGN
23. ANALOGIC DESIGN
• New words are formed mostly by the use of analogy.
• New visual forms frequently arise by analogous processes-
Intensifying their analogic qualities and making them obvious
to others.
• This method of generating new forms does seem fundamental to
the human mind.
24. The first application to the
formal architecture took place
in the vast funerary complex-
designed by Imhotep for
King Djoser at Saqqara near
Memphis.
The only permanent buildings in the Nile valley up to this time had
been mastaba tombs of sun dried brick, flat topped with sloping sides-
a formal analogy with the heap of stones which burial shafts had come
to be covered with.
25. Imhotep had no precedent for permanent building on this scale
The tomb itself was covered by a large square mastaba which was
extended several times, both horizontally and vertically.
26. Imhotep’s use of analogy extends from the forms of the building
themselves to applied decoration, such as capitals carved in the form
of lotus buds or flowers, cresting in the form of cobra heads etc.
The first architectural
drawings have been
found at Saqqara- appx.
2800 BC
28. • Instead of starting work immediately, handling real materials in
pragmatic or iconic fashion, a designer prepared the drawing
first as an earnest of his intentions;
• He may even have tried out several curves
in drawn form before choosing one, thus
conducting his pragmatic experiments in
the form of a simulation or drawn analogue
before committing himself to particular case.
29. • He begins to draw grids, axes and
other devices by which the size and
shape of the drawing can be
determined before he starts the
detailed design.
30. • Drawings were used in the translation of known visual forms to
new usage
• Drawing itself begins to impose conventions on the designer to
suggest order and regularity.
• Analogic design with or without the use of design analogues is still
the most potent source of creative ideas in architecture.
• Le Corbusier drew
an extraordinary
range of analogies
in the generation of
his chapel at
Ronchamp (1953),
including the shell
of a crab.
31. • F. L. Wright’s water lilies or mushrooms as analogies for the structural
units of the Johnson Wax Company administration building (1936)
and Tower (1951)
• His own hands in prayer for the Unitarian meeting house at Madison
(1951)
32. CANONIC DESIGN
• The designer prepared drawings
before he started work on the site, the
drawing itself acquired a particular
fascination for him.
• He developed a concern for pattern,
for order and regularity which was
expressed in the form of an overriding
grid.
33. • Grids used in transferring a composition to
the wall from and original sketch - the grids
of proportional systems- Canonic grids.
• A proportional system will provide the
designer with authority for a great many
decisions about the shape of a figure, the
size and shape of a façade, a window, a door
way and so on.
34. • Some designers look for the authority of a geometric system received
from Greek mathematicians such as Pythagoreans and philosophers
especially Plato.
35. • Plato envisaged a structure for the
universe based on the four elements of
earth, air, fire & water- each made from
regular geometric solids which were
formed from equilateral or isosceles
triangles.
• Plato’s derivation of the
triangle and square
which form the faces of
his primary bodies from
the 600 & 450 triangles
respectively.
36. • Plato’s ideas seem to have
found expressions in Greek
classic architecture- the
archaic Doric temple.
37. • The orders themselves implied a
canonic system, with their fixed
proportional relationships between
column diameters, height, spacing
and so on.
38. • Morgan (1961) describes
further applications in his
Canonic design in English
mediaeval architecture.
39. • Wittkower (1962) has
described Architectural
Principles in the Age of
Humanism (the Renaissance)
almost entirely in canonic terms.
• Canonic is the most
intellectual way of designing.
