Modernist Architecture and Ruins

Modernist Architecture and Ruins: On Ruins as a Minus, Neoclassicism and the Uncann

Space is the machine, part four: theoretical syntheses

Part IV of the book, ‘Theoretical Syntheses’, begins to draw together some of the questions raised in Part I, the regularities shown in Part II and the laws proposed in Part III, to suggest how the two central problems in architectural theory, namely the form-function problem and the form-meaning problem, can be reconceptualised. Chapter 10, ‘Space is the machine’, reviews the form-function theory in architecture and attempts to establish a pathology of its formulation: how it came to be set up in such a way that it could not be solved. It then proposes how the configuration paradigm permits a reformulation, through which we can not only make sense of the relation between form and function in buildings, but also we can make sense of how and why buildings, in a powerful sense are ‘social objects’ and in fact play a powerful role in the realisation and sustaining of human society. Finally, in Chapter 11, ‘The reasoning art’, the notion of configuration is applied to the study of what architects do, that is, design. Previous models of the design process are reviewed, and it is shown that without knowledge of configuration and the concept of the non-discursive, we cannot understand the internalities of the design process. A new knowledge-based model of design is proposed, with configuration at its centre. It is argued from this that because design is a configurational process, and because it is the characteristic of configuration that local changes make global differences, design is necessarily a top down process. This does not mean that it cannot be analysed, or supported by research. It shows however that only configurationally biased knowledge can really support the design Introduction Space is the machine | Bill Hillier Space Syntax Introduction process, and this, essentially, is theoretical knowledge. It follows from this that attempts to support designers by building methods and systems for bottom up construction of designs must eventually fail as explanatory systems. They can serve to create specific architectural identities, but not to advance general architectural understanding. In pursuing an analytic rather than a normative theory of architecture, the book might be thought by some to have pretensions to make the art of architecture into a science. This is not what is intended. One effect of a better scientific understanding of architecture is to show that although architecture as a phenomenon is capable of considerable scientific understanding, this does not mean that as a practice architecture is not an art. On the contrary, it shows quite clearly why it is an art and what the nature and limits of that art are. Architecture is an art because, although in key respects its forms can be analysed and understood by scientific means, its forms can only be prescribed by scientific means in a very restricted sense. Architecture is law governed but it is not determinate. What is governed by the laws is not the form of individual buildings but the field of possibility within which the choice of form is made. This means that the impact of these laws on the passage from problem statement to solution is not direct but indirect. It lies deep in the spatial and physical forms of buildings, in their genotypes, not their phenotypes. Architecture is therefore not part art, and part science, in the sense that it has both technical and aesthetic aspects, but is both art and science in the sense that it requires both the processes of abstraction by which we know science and the processes of concretion by which we know art. The architect as scientist and as theorist seeks to establish the laws of the spatial and formal materials with which the architect as artist then composes. The greater scientific content of architecture over art is simply a function of the far greater complexity of the raw materials of space and form, and their far greater reverberations for other aspects of life, than any materials that an artist uses. It is the fact that the architect designs with the spatial stuff of living that builds the science of architecture into the art of architecture. It may seem curious to argue that the quest for a scientific understanding of architecture does not lead to the conclusion that architecture is a science, but nevertheless it is the case. In the last analysis, architectural theory is a matter of understanding architecture as a system of possibilities, and how these are restricted by laws which link this system of possibilities to the spatial potentialities of human life. At this level, and perhaps only at this level, architecture is analogous to language. Language is often naïvely conceptualised as a set of words and meanings, set out in a dictionary, and syntactic rules by which they may be combined into meaningful sentences, set out in grammars. This is not what language is, and the laws that govern language are not of this kind. This can be seen from the simple fact that if we take the words of the dictionary and combine them in grammatically correct sentences, virtually all are utterly meaningless and do not count as legitimate sentences. The structures of language are the laws which restrict the combinatorial possibilities of words, and through these restrictions construct the sayable and the meaningful. The laws of language do not therefore tell us what to say, but prescribe the structure and limits of the sayable. It is within these limits that we use language as the prime means to our individuality and creativity. In this sense architecture does resemble language. The laws of the field of architecture do not tell designers what to do. By restricting and structuring the field of combinatorial possibility, they prescribe the limits within which architecture is possible. As with language, what is left from this restrictive structuring is rich beyond imagination. Even so, without these laws buildings would not be human products, any more than meaningless but syntactically correct concatenations of words are human sentences. The case for a theoretical understanding of architecture then rests eventually not on aspiration to philosophical or scientific status, but on the nature of architecture itself. The foundational proposition of the book is that architecture is an inherently theoretical subject. The very act of building raises issues about the relations of the form of the material world and the way in which we live in it which (as any archaeologist knows who has tried to puzzle out a culture from material remains) are unavoidably both philosophical and scientific. Architecture is the most everyday, the most enveloping, the largest and the most culturally determined human artefact. The act of building implies the transmission of cultural conventions answering these questions through custom and habit. Architecture is their rendering explicit, and their transmutation into a realm of innovation and, at its best, of art. In a sense, architecture is abstract thought applied to building, even therefore in a sense theory applied to building. This is why, in the end, architecture must have analytic theories

The Facets of Place

This chapter will outline one theory aimed at integrating aspects of environmental psychology with issues in architectural design. The theory to be reviewed is broad in those characteristics of theory that Moore (1987) called their 'form and scope'. This broad brush, top down approach is intended as a contrast with bottom up attempts to specify the behavioural effects of specific aspects of design, such as lighting levels or size of spaces. It also contrasts with models that seek to answer immediate design problems. However, in Moore's (1987) vocabulary, the theory to be outlined is more than an 'orientation', or 'framework'. It is an 'explanatory theory' that has been found to have considerable scope, open to direct empirical test

Post-modernism's use and abuse of Nietzsche

I focus on Nietzsche's architectural metaphor of self-construction in arguing for the claim that postmodern readings of Nietzsche misunderstand his various attacks on dogmatic philosophy as paving the way for acceptance of a self characterized by fundamental disunity. Nietzsche's attack on essentialist dogmatic metaphysics is a call to engage in a purposive self-creation under a unifying will, a will that possesses the strength to reinterpret history as a pathway to "the problem that we are". Nietzsche agrees with the postmodernists that unity is not a pre-given, however he would disavow their rejection of unity as a goal. Where the postmodernists celebrate "the death of the subject" Nietzsche rejects this valorization of disunity as a form of Nihilism and prescribes the creation of a genuine unified subjectivity to those few capable of such a goal. Postmodernists are nearer Nietzsche's idea of the Last Man than his idea of the Overman.Articl

Yesterday’s church of tomorrow: St. John the Baptist, Ermine Estate

Consecrated in 1963, the parish church of St. John the Baptist is a major contribution to ecclesiastical architecture of the second half of the 20th century. This avant-garde building is the central feature of the Ermine Estate in the provincial city of Lincoln. Its importance lies in combining innovative minimalist architectural thinking with advanced liturgical planning. The structure was designed by an architect largely invisible in architectural history, Sam Scorer, and a structural engineer, Hajnal Konyi. It consists of an impressive hyperbolic paraboloid roof made in reinforced concrete. Its form was fashionable and functional (romantically rational). It gave an impression of contradicting laws of gravity. It summarizes the post-war excitement with engineering. The paper contains a discussion about contradictions and discontinuities that occur in the story of this intriguing architectural precedent

MEANING AND RELEVANCE IN NIGERIAN TRADITIONAL ARCHITECTURE: THE DIALECTICS OF GROWTH AND CHANGE

Aside from the brief descriptions of some traditional dwelling types and settlements gleaned from the notes of early Europeans explorers and missionaries, few and scattered efforts exist to provide information on the African Traditional Architecture. The early assumption that the Africans lived in unstructured, isolated bush communities with little appreciation of the aesthetics in town design may have restricted enquiry into indigenous African Architecture. This lack in information would appear compounded as architectural history and the theory of Architecture have traditionally emphasized the study of monuments. The monumental work in Sir Bannister Fletcher's History of Architecture left out the rest of Africa after elaborating on the Architecture of Egypt which featured the pyramids and the temple

Change and continuity: a morphological investigation of the creation of gated communities in post-reform Beijing

Alongside the socio-economic restructuring from a central planning system to a free market system, Beijing is being transformed into a “gated city of tomorrow” by building massive gated communities as a new form of private neighborhood planning and design. Although certain scholarly attentions have been received through the international debate over gated communities, there is a lack of systematic research on how these private urban landscapes are actually created at the micro-level and how their creation is related with historical development and social process. Therefore, this paper aims to contribute to an understanding of the origin and nature of the creation of gated communities in the setting of Beijing through a careful morphological investigation. More exactly, a set of private gated community schemes and a set of public produced neighborhood schemes of the early socialist period will be cross compared according to the major neighborhood morphological components in order to reveal the differences and similarities in their morphology, or in another sense the change and continuity in their planning and design. Meanwhile, the ideas and logics underpinning the changes will be accounted. Finally, design origins and the links between the morphological changes and the broad social process will be discussed in light of the research findings

Building together / buildings together

A discussion of the problem of creating unified places in a pluralistic multicultural society

Size Matters: Microservices Research and Applications

In this chapter we offer an overview of microservices providing the introductory information that a reader should know before continuing reading this book. We introduce the idea of microservices and we discuss some of the current research challenges and real-life software applications where the microservice paradigm play a key role. We have identified a set of areas where both researcher and developer can propose new ideas and technical solutions.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1706.0735