Complexity vs Simplicity: The Contrasts of Architectural Language in the Past and in the Present

The architecture, the landscape, the urban planning, the information technology and the other disciplines merge and move towards extreme evolution. In search of extreme and unusual shapes and heights to overcome a fictitious challenge between power and ability, it is opposed to the need to simplify the representation and make it elementary. The design of the city is an action that humankind has always done and that the various cultures and populations have developed by creating different rules: orthogonal grids, main axes, concentric patterns and the most varied forms. The development of new settlements is determined by the design of new infrastructures, new axes and the creation of new blocks and buildings. A peculiar phenomenon of recent years, which inspires and goes beyond experiences of the past (ideal cities), is represented by the creation of new cities in the United Arab Emirates where the limits do not exist, the territory is designed with artificial forms, the coastline is remodeled with figures and elementary representations, ever higher and bizarre skyscrapers rise with extreme rapidity requiring considerable economic resources and technological capabilities. This search for complex forms of buildings is observed all over the world; it is now a challenge among the greatest architectural firms to use parametric design to create new buildings. This technology allows us to overcome the limits of the past and the design of intrepid shapes that release from simple geometric shapes, creating a new contemporary language. It is clear that without a proper cultural and intellectual background it is only a game with shapes. This new way of designing the city and its parts must be in some way understandable by everyone, therefore the need to find clear and elementary methods of representation. The general agreement and the acceptance of new forms are essential for identification in the new language. Actually, even if the design process is represented in a schematic way, very complex design software is used

Beyond scoring: facilitating enhanced evaluation of the design quality of NHS healthcare buildings

The evaluation of design quality using prescribed instruments, as now mandated by the UK National Health Service (NHS), provides a research opportunity to acquire understanding of the social interaction of the project stakeholder groups when they are engaged in design evaluation activities. This paper argues that there is a pressing need for such a study, as without it, such evaluations may be unnecessarily limited. This paper argues for a fresh and pluralistic approach to be applied to the evaluation of the design quality of NHS healthcare facilities which complements the methods currently used which are enshrined within prescribed instruments. The new approach uses an interpretative research paradigm to understand the social interactions of the project stakeholders whilst they use the prescribed instruments. The decision to adopt such a pluralistic approach is discussed. The users of this work may include those who seek to improve the design quality of NHS healthcare buildings

Intertwining

From Vitruvius’ Ten Books on Architecture to Wagner’s conception of the Gesamkunstwerk, many would agree that each area of art should influence the others. By narrowing my study to the relationship of architecture and music, I will explore in depth how music can directly influence the design, in form and experience, of architecture.There are two ways to understand the interactions of music and architecture. The analogical is concerned with the artist’s intention and technical procedure. Often, we think of the Pythagorean philosophy concerning the mathematical relationships that both music and architecture employ. These include, but are not limited to, harmony, rhythm and order. The Pythagoreans are credited for having brought measure to music through the study of the monochord, pipes, and bells. Pythagoras discovered through plucking strings of different lengths, hitting bells, and blowing pipes of different lengths that musical harmony existed in multiples of the original note. Architectural form and structure follow many of the same rules in which music is composed. For example, single components of primary structure, such as rhythm, may include secondary structural components to create harmony. Also, Architecture can use musical iconography in the form of buildings. Frank Gehry uses several musical icons and distorts them in order to give shape to his Experience Music Project building. This is the most literal translation of musical influence on architecture. I am not suggesting this is the appropriate way in which these forces meet. However, a combination of the following two interactions will be further explored.There also exists the metaphorical, the poetic analogies that exist in both architecture and music. We use a different art to describe the impalpable effects that another art has on us in order to better identify that effect. Like built architecture, performed music can capture many emotions and feelings. Music is much like architecture in that it is written as well as experienced. “For Kahn, the work of the architect was closer to that of the musician than to that of the painter because the visual notations on paper which both musicians and architects make represent something outside the paper. A musical score represents sound, an architectural plan the three-dimensional experience of mass, space and light,” (Shaw-Miller, 34). Musicians continually write and rewrite pieces so that in the end, their audience will be able to fully engage in the experience of the music. In order for this to be a rich experience the music must be composed in great detail through many layers. I would argue that music can be used as a precedent for technique and intention, and also for the metaphorical, to create an effect in architecture. In this thesis, I will explain how we, as architects, can learn from the creation and experience of music and translate this into architecture by designing through a deep layering of information in order to create a rich, inspirational experience

Spatial palindromes/palindromic spaces: spatial devices in Vitruvius, Mallarmé, Polieri, Perec and Libeskind

This thesis explores non-linear geometric texts and narratives in literature and architecture and the experience of space that is facilitated by them. The research focuses on the palindrome because it is a non-linear mathematical/geometrical device that is found both in literature and architecture. In language, the palindrome is expressed in the geometrical arrangement of words, letters or concepts in the text or the narrative; and, in architecture, as mirrored symmetries or palindromic proportions, measurements and distributions of elements in drawings and buildings. The primary aim of the thesis is to explore the spatial qualities of palindromes, and the experience of those qualities not only in text but also in architecture. This dissertation thus consists of two parts: the first examines Spatial Palindromes in terms of the spatial structures of selected texts and considers their relation to architecture; and the second examines Palindromic Spaces in terms of the spatial experiences created by and through palindromes in text and architecture. The first part, Spatial Palindromes, constructs an original history of the spatial qualities of palindromes by looking at the theory guiding the use of non-linear devices in texts and architecture. This history moves from the use of palindromes in the work of classical figures and scholars (Orpheus, Pythagoras and Vitruvius), to the Medieval and Renaissance practice of mnemonics (Frances Yates, Mary Carruthers), to early twentieth-century structural linguistics (Ferdinand de Saussure) and the group OuLiPo (Raymond Queneau, Franyois Le Lionnais) and, finally, to late twentieth-century post-structural linguistics (Jean Baudrillard.) The thesis argues that palindromes create spatial experiences both in texts and architecture. For this reason the second part, Palindromic Spaces, studies the nature of spatial experience in the fictions and designs of Stephane Mallarme, Jacques Polieri, Georges Perec, and Daniel Libeskind. According to Baudrillard the poetic space, hidden or revealed by the anagram and palindrome, is where the solid structure of language is "exterminated." This act of extermination, or the poetic space that palindrome reveals in language, opens up perception, memory and recollection to a spatial experience "that incorporates the recession of outcomes ad infinitum;" a self-generated, self-consumed or self-reflective conception of history and space that this thesis aims to explore in architecture

Observations and experiments in architecture and corporeality

Tese de Doutoramento em Arquitetura, com a especialização em Teoria e Prática do Projeto, apresentada na Faculdade de Arquitetura da Universidade de Lisboa para obtenção do grau de Doutor.N/