SYMBOLIC ARCHITECTURE

MECHANICAL ANALOGY

A machine is a house for living

Beauty assumes the promise of function

PROBLEM-SOLVING ANALOGY

RATIONALIST: analysis, synthesis, evaluation

Logical, Systematic, or Parametric in Approach

ADHOCIST ANALOGY

Responding to the immediate need using materials immediately available

PATTERN LANGUAGE ANALOGY

Observing patterns of environment-behavior relationships

DRAMATURGICAL ANALOGY

All the world is a stage

The architect as director

MATHEMATICAL ANALOGY

Pure forms

Golden Section

BIOLOGICAL ANALOGY

ORGANIC: relationship between parts of building or between the building and its settings movement

BIOMORPHIC: focuses on growth processes and capabilities associated with organisms

ROMANTIC ANALOGY

BY ASSOCIATION: making references

BY EXAGGERATION: use of contrast, excessive stimulation,

unfamiliar scale, and unfamiliar forms

LINGUISTIC ANALOGY

GRAMMATICAL MODEL: elements (words) & rules (grammar)

EXPRESSIONIST MODEL: buildings as vehicles for

expressing an attitude towards a project

SEMIOTIC MODEL:

using symbols literally

FUNCTIONALISM

PRECONDITIONS IN FUNCTIONAL ARCHITECTURE

 Function is one of the cornerstones of Vitruvian theory.

 Did not receive as much attention in Renaissance era.
 Industrial Revolution
 Eugene Viollet-le-Duc


20th CENTURY ARCHITECTURE

  The Chicago School
 Louis Sullivan: Ornament in Architecture (1892)
 "Form follows function"
 Frank Lloyd Wright "Form and function as one"
 Otto Wagner: Moderne Arckitektur (1895)
 Bauhaus and Walther Gropius
 Architecture supported by "mother sciences"
 Construction Economy "matchbox architecture"
 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe "Less is more"

PERSONAL STYLES

THEORETICAL TREATISES

Five Points of Architecture (1926, Le Corbusier)

1. pilotis
2. free plan
3. free façade
4. the long horizontal sliding window
5. the roof garden

Architecture as Space (Bruno Zevi)

“The crux of architecture is not the sculptural pattern, but instead the which the building interiors. These can be seen as "negative solids," as voids artist
divides, combines, repeats and emphasizes in the same way as sculptor treats his "positive" lumps of substance."

The "personal styles” of architects are not necessarily based on laws of nature or on logical reasoning. More important is that they exhibit a coherent
application of an idea which can also be a clear that the public can find it out. An advantage is also if the style includes symbolical undertones.

Copying from antiquity

 Architecture from antiquity came to a point of perfection

 Eugene viollet-le-duc (1863) the 1st theorist who set out to create a totally new system of architectural forms indepent of antiquity

“What we call taste is but an involutary process of reasoning whose steps elude our observation. Authority has no value if its grounds are not explained”

 The foundation of modern architecture

 Although viollet-le-duc did not create a timeless architectural style himself, he showed others the philosophical foundation and the method that
could use to develop even radically new form languages.
 Owen jones used forms inspired from nature, especially plants.

Art nouveau

 The 1st architectural style independent of the tradition of antiquity after the gothic style
 The example set by art nouveau encouraged some of the most skillful architects of the 20th century to create their private form languages.
 Le Corbusier architectural psychology, as natural forms of plants, buildings as giant sculptures.

CONSTRUCTION THEORY

DURING MIDDLE AGES

 No written document survived about theories or models to describe the magnificent vaults of medieval cathedrals.
 Shapes of gothic vaults resemble inverted catenaries.
 Architects design not only the layout and decoration but also the construction and stability of buildings

DURING RENAISSANCE

 From Alberti onwards, architects began specializing. Thus, the mechanics of materials & construction started to become a field of study of its own.
 Mathematical models by Francis Bacon and Galileo Galilei.
 1675: Marquis de Vauban founded a building department in the French army called "Corps des ingenieurs"
 1747 Ecole des Ponts et Chaussees, special school founded in Paris where new profession specializing in construction was organized
 Other figures who developed mathematical construction theory Robert Hooke; Jakob Bernoulli; Leonard Euler
 From Euler onwards, theory of elasticity of structures developed.
 Building Material Architectural Form

Amorphic material:soft stone, snow Spherical vaulted construction

Sheets of skin or textile Cone-shaped tent construction

Logs of wood Box-shaped construction

BEFORE WRITTEN CONSTRUCTION THEORY

 Architecture created without the help of architects or theory

 Builders used a model instead of mathematical algorithms now used in modern construction.
 Inverted "catenary" model.

SEMI-CIRCULAR VAULT: THEORY BY VITRUVE

 "When there are arches... the outermost piers must be made broader than the others, so that they may have the strength to resist when the wedges, under
the pressure of the load of the walls, begin to thrust out the abutments."

Renaissance theories
ANDREA PALLADIO (1508-80)

"I quattro libri dell'architectura" -the father of modern picture books of architecture

PHILIBERT DE L'ORME

 one of French theorists who are critical of Italians

 proved that Pantheon's Corinthian columns had 3 different proportions
 thus, rejected the doctrine of absolute beauty of measures

WORKS PRINTED BY FRENCH THEORISTS

1. Francois Nicolas Blondel: Cours d'architecture (1675)

2. Claude Perrault: Ordonnance des cinq especes de colonnes (1683)
3. Jean Louis de Cordemoy: Nouveau traite de toute l'architecture (1706)
4. Marc-Antoine Laugier: Essai sur l'architecture (1753)
5. Jacques-Francois Blondel: Cours d'architecture (1770)
6. J-N-L Durand: Precis des lecons (1802-5)
7. Julien Guadet: Elements et theories de l'architecture (1902)

1418 – a copy of vitruve manuscripts found at ST. GALLEN MONASTERY

Leon battista alberti (1404-72)

 A person in charge of constructions commanded by pope.

 “ON BUILDING” = de re aedificatoria
1. One of the greatest works of the theory of architecture
2. competed in 1433, published in 145
3. more emphasis on decenaties of balding or

SEBASTIANO SOLO

“Regole generall di architectura”

GIACOMO BAROZZI DA VIGNOLA

 “Regola delie cinque ordini”

 concise, fast and easily applicable niles of the five com systems
 based his design mstructions on four things:
1. Ides of Pythagoras (proportions of small numbers meant harmony
2. proportions and other instructions provided by
3. example art by earlier buildings
 4. general good taste

Classical theories

Marcus Vitruvius pollio

 Author of the oldest research on the architecture

 Wrote an extensive summary of all the theory on construction.
 Had a thorough kwowledge of an earlier Greek and roman writings.

Ten books on architecture

 De architectura libri decem

 Consists most of normative theory design (based on practice)
 A collection of thematic theories of design with no method of combining them into a sysnthesis
 Presents a classification of requirements set for buildings:
1. Durability (Firmitas)
2. Practicality or convenience (utilitas)
3. Pleasantness (venustas)

VITRUVIAN RULES OF AESTHETIC FORM

 Based on Greek traditions of architecture

 Teachings of Pythagoras = applying proportions of numbers
 Observations of tuned strings of instruments
 Proportions of human body
 Pleasantness = in accordance with good taste
= parts follow proportions
= symmetry of measures

Theories in the Middle Ages

Monastery institution

 Most documents retrieved from the middle ages

 However, archives contain only few descriptions of buildings
 Described only as “according to the traditional model”
 There is no accounting for tastes “was the rule of thumb

Development of building style

 With hardly or no literary research present

 Villiard de honnecourt’s “sketchbook” in 1235
 Roritzer’s “booklet on the right way of making pinnacles”
 Only through guidance of old masters
 Tradition binding and precise in closed guilds of builders.