01 analysis tools and techniques

Architectural Analysis
Definition, tools & techniques
Alberto Iacovoni, Marialuisa Palumbo | Cornell in Rome

Analysis?
Detailed examination of the elements or structure of something
Oxford Dictionary

Analysis?
The process of separating something into its constituent elements
Oxford Dictionary

Analysis?
From Medieval Latin analysis, fromAncient Greek ἀνάλυσις,
from ἀναλύω (analúō, “I unravel, investigate”),
from ἀνά (aná, “on, up”) + λύω (lúō, “I loosen”)

Analysis?
From Medieval Latin analysis, fromAncient Greek ἀνάλυσις,
from ἀναλύω (analúō, “I unravel, investigate”),
from ἀνά (aná, “on, up”) + λύω (lúō, “Iloosen”)

Architectural Analysis?
Analysis is breaking down a work into parts
in order to examine a subject from multiple perspectives

It is an investigation organized to uncover
what may have been the strategies for a project's design
Warke and Simitch

Designing backwards
Jerry Wells

It is therefore a process in which we loosen an object of study,
break down into parts to recompose it in a critical perspective.

goals
1.
To practice (backwards) the design of a masterpiece

goals
2.
To understand the consistency of the choices in the design process
The tension between rules and exceptions,
model and context, ideas and reality

goals
3.
To evaluate innovation in a given historical context

goals
4.
To understand the meaning of architecture,
and the theories and discourses that have produced a specific form

Types of analysis
We can see anything from multiple points of view.
Architecture, being the physical manifestation of multiple factors,
can be analyzed following different approaches.

Types of analysis
- experential
- formal
- linguistic
- typological
- morphological
- programmatic
phylogenetic

experiential
Understanding the main focus of architecture,
the human experience

Acropolis of Athens | Le Corbusier

Architectural spacing in the Acropolis of Athens | Costantinos Dioxiadis

Architectural spacing in the Acropolis of Athens I, II, III | Costantinos Dioxiadis

The View From the Road | Donald Appleyard, Kevin Lynch, John R. Myer 1965

formal
Balzac writes in one of his political treatises:
«Everything is form, and life itself is a form».
Not only does every activity allow itself to bediscerned
and deined to the extent that it takes form (...);
life itself acts essentially as a creator of forms.
Life is form, and form is the mode of life.
La vie des formes Henri focillon 1934

S.Maria Novella | Leon Battista Alberti

S. Lorenzo Facade | Michelangelo

S. Lorenzo Facade | Phenomenal Transparencies Analysis by Rowe+ Slutzky

Villa Rotonda | Andrea Palladio

Villa Rotonda | in Spazio, Luigi Moretti

Bernini and Rainaldi: Baroque Heterogeneity | Christopher Leung – Formal Anlysis@Yale

Casa del Fascio | Giuseppe Terragni

Casa del Fascio | Peter Eisenman

Guardiola House | Peter Eisenman

linguistic
To consider architecture as a language,
with its words, grammar and synthax

De Re Aedificatoria | Leon Battista Alberti

Trattato di Architettura | Sebastiano Serlio

Palazzo dei Senatori | Michelangelo

San Francesco della Vigna | Andrea Palladio

typological
To reduce to a finite number of cases
the infinity of possible phenomena.
Vittorio Gregotti 1993

typological
“all is precise and given in the model
all is more or less vague in the type”
A. C. Quatremèere de Quincy 1788

Recueil et parallèle des edifices de tous genres, anciens et modernes | J.N.L. Durand. 1799

Hong Kong high-rise housing types |

Palazzo Strozzi, Farnese, Pitti | plans

Palazzo Strozzi, Farnese, Pitti | elevations

Casa del Fascio in Como, Post Office in Rome | plans

Casa del Fascio in Como, Post Office in Rome | elevations

morphological
The word “morphology” has been used to indicate
(…) a dimensional scale and complexity of relations
higher than the single building element
and than its designed form.
Gregotti 1995

Bern, Padova | Urban morphology

Berlin Friedrichstrasse / Florence modern housing block / Florence Galileo housing

programmatic
The program has become important in modern architecture
Functionalism is based on the reinvention of typologies
based on an interpretation of the program.

Program Analysis - Seattle Central Library | OMA

Tools
The medium is the message

Tools
Different techniques have specific qualities for specific aspects

Tools
Not all of them are good for every situation:
some case studies will require only few,
some others could be analyzed with all of them,
depending on their specific qualities and your critical approach

Tools / photographs

Tools / photographs
Photography, unless used in a very peculiar way,
tends to capture the whole of a landscape
instead of uncovering its constituent elements

Tools / photographs
Photography is therefore a tool to record and compare
preliminary to analysis but not an analytical tool

Tools / sketches

Tools / sketches
In a world of digital procedures
that increasingly filter our intentions and actions,
immediacy is a fragile and precious value.

Tools / sketches
No need for detail,
just few signs to loosen into parts
and comprehend some specific values

Tools / sketches
> reduce a perspective to a minimum fundamental lines
> register sequences and movements through space
> reveal structures / armatures / relationships
> on site axons to shift to an abstract and overall point of view
> isolate details

Insiemi Barocchi | Luigi Moretti

Tools / drawings

Tools / drawings
Preliminary operations:
> isolate layers (plans, elevations, axons)
> figure/ground (plans, elevations)
> isolate the primary elements of the urban fabric

Tools / drawings
Analysis:
> highlight axes, traces, alignments (plans)
> grids and patterns (plans, elevations, axons)

Learning ffroom Las Vegas | R. Venturi D. Scott Brown

Olivetti Training Center Dormitory | Richard Meier

House in Pound Ridge | Richard Meier

Giuseppe Terragni - Casa del Fascio | Peter Eisenman

Tools / models
> conceptual models
> negative spaces
> layers

S. Filippo Neri | Luigi Moretti

Warnings
1.
Always respect the correct dimensions and proportions

Warnings
2.
Verify everything you find on the web,
like the crap that follows...

Palazzo dei Conservatori | Fake (and meaningless) elevation-plan relation, from the web

Palazzo dei Conservatori | elevation

Palazzo dei Conservatori | Real elevation-plan relation

Warnings
3.
Give the right place to the references

Warnings
4.
Always include the context

Architectural Analysis II:
Architecture, the City and the Landscape

back to theory
all the analysis on the physical object and context
have to be brought back to the ideas that generated them.

back to theory
because ideas (principles, beliefs, habits) are driving
the designer's choices even in the most practical ones
among a multiplicity of possible solutions

questions
The value of form
- why a specific geometry?
- why symmetry – or not?
- why organic geometries in the realm of inorganic?

questions
Rules, norms, codes
- which are the rules governing the project?
- which of the established rules have been broken?
- are these excetpions a choice or a consequence of the context?
- which are the effects on space?

questions
The building, the city, the landscape
- which kind of dialogue architecture establishes with the context?
- where are the boundaries of this dialogue?
- how much the constraints have determined the project?
- where they opportunities for innovation or problems to hide?
- which are the effects of the tension between model and site?
- are the details related to this larger picture?
- which relation between the individual architecture and collectivity?

assignments
We will ask you to associate
analytic images/sketches/drawings to sentences and concepts
that we will discuss, and that will be part of your readings.

assignments
> deliver a personal and passionate analysis of the case studies
> choose one or more types of analysis following your interest
> feel free to force them if for good reasons

assignments
> search for a consistency in your analysis
> re-edit the drawing once it's clear the focus of your analysis

01 analysis tools and techniques

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