This document outlines 17 terms and concepts from Simon Unwin's book "Analysing Architecture". The terms describe different elements and approaches to analyzing architecture, including the identification of place, basic architectural elements like walls and floors, modifying elements like light and scale, and relationships between space, structure, and geometry. Some specific concepts discussed are framing activities, using existing site elements, elements with multiple functions, primitive place types, and the relationship between refuge and prospect.

1. “TERMS” ON ‘ANALYSING ARCHITECTURE’ BY ‘SIMON UNWIN’
K.KEDHEESWARAN, M.Arch, Asst-proff
The following analyses use the methodology and conceptual framework offered in
Analysing Architecture by Simon Unwin
1. ‘Identification of place’ – the realisation that architecture, distinct from other art
forms, begins with the desire or need to establish a place or places in the world;
2. ‘Basic elements’ – wall, floor, roof, defined area of ground, pit, platform,
doorway, window…; i.e. the basic elements of the ‘language’ of architecture;
3. ‘Modifying elements’ – light, temperature, scale, ventilation, texture, time…; i.e.
elements that come into play once a work of architecture is built, and which modify
experience of it;
4. ‘Framing’ – the realisation that architecture relates to activities and objects (even
moods) by framing them; and that by doing so helps to make sense of and for them;
5. ‘Using things that are there’ – the idea that architecture (except in astronaut’s
space) never exists in a vacuum and that it therefore can exploit elements of its
surroundings, such as a tree or elevated ground, an existing wall or the reflection of
light off a lake;
6. ‘Elements doing more than one thing’ – the way a wall might be both a barrier
and a pathway, as in the case of the curtain wall of a castle; the way that a window
might offer views both outwards and inwards;
7. ‘Primitive place types’ – place types, usually with their own accepted names,
timelessly part of human inhabitation of the world, e.g. bed, altar, hearth, pulpit…;
8. ‘Temples and cottages’ – a complex dimension of attitudes architects adopt
towards aspects of the world (site, materials, climate, people, history, the future…)
ranging, roughly speaking, from those of control to those of acceptance or
responsiveness;
9. ‘Geometries of being’ – geometry that is innate to materials, the ways in which
they are made and constructed to human form and movement…;
10.‘Ideal geometry’ – geometry that is imposed onto materials, the ways in which
they are made, onto human form and movement…, i.e. perfect squares, circles,
rectangles with particular mathematical proportions, computer-generated
formulae…;
11.‘Stratification’ – the organisation of buildings in the vertical dimension, the
differing relationships between different levels of a building and the ground;
12.‘Space and structure’ – the various relationships between structural order and
spatial organisation;

2. “TERMS” ON ‘ANALYSING ARCHITECTURE’ BY ‘SIMON UNWIN’
K.KEDHEESWARAN, M.Arch, Asst-proff
13.‘Parallel walls’ – spatial organisation based in the use of parallel, and usually
load-bearing, walls;
14.‘Transition, hierarchy, heart’ – the progressive zoning of the spatial
organisation of a building, e.g. between public and private, sacred and secular, etc.;
15.‘The in-between’ – architecture is often (if not always) concerned with separating
(differentiating) an inside from the general outside; places that are neither fully
inside nor fully outside are in-between;
16.‘Inhabited wall’ – walls that are so thick that spaces can be excavated within
their thickness;
17.‘Refuge and prospect’ – the relationship between small places of concealment or
retirement and their views over the surroundings or an arena.