Physiological and cognitive discontinuities: From mythical mediation to implicit discretization of architectural design tools

In architectural design, representation tools are often compared according to their alleged effects on the creativity of designers. Moreover, their mediating capacities are often mythicized, to such an extent that one might surmise the direct transmission of the mental images from the designer's consciousness to an external representation. In this speculative essay, we demonstrate that the process of representation at work in architectural design originates from the designer's consciousness natural cognitive ability, rather than from the use of a specific mediation tool between the designer and his environment, between the mentally constructed architectural project and its representation. The effects of any tool of representation—analog or digital—on our perceptual apparatus depend primarily on the cognitive mechanisms affecting the discontinuous flow of internal representations formed by our consciousness. In other words, we propose to shed a new light on these limitations through the heuristic modeling of an architectural project designer confronted with his own cognitive biases, and the limits of the representation processes. In the present essay, the discontinuities and uncertainties inherent to the processes of representation are reintegrate in the models.     

An Interview With Bernard Tschumi

Fredric Jameson (1934-), a critical theorist and Marxist philosopher who has written numerous books and articles on critical theory, is recognized as the first thinker who brought postmodernism's critical theory into architectural discourse. In Jameson's own words, “it was the representation of architecture that sparked dynamic dialogues of postmodernism as a cultural logic.” Architecture thus plays a most significant role in the formulation of his postmodernist theory. Jameson's contribution has become one of the major areas of research for several prominent architectural theorists and architects. This paper reviews Jameson's shift in his approach from Marxist theory to postmodernism. The investigation into this shift not only sheds light on the early theorizing of architecture, but also begins to add a historical dimension to various strands of interdisciplinary thinking on architecture and its philosophical undergirdings. Following a historical introduction to Jameson's theories and criticisms of architecture, the paper then covers his life and theories; clarifies his concepts of Marxism, postmodernism, and architecture, with particular attention to his interest in historicism and the role of built forms in cultural construction; and, lastly, delivers a thorough criticism of his works that have influenced architectural disciplines.     

Immersed in Aqueous Atmospheres

This article is an examination of Philip Johnson's Crystal Cathedral (1980) as an architectural environment intersecting with the televisual entertainment industry. Although the Crystal Cathedral has been read as a reflective glass building that abandoned the mysticism of transparency to assert its object status, using Peter Sloterdijk's theorization of immersion we may also understand the structure as an aqueous atmosphere into which one dips. Johnson's church speaks to the dual desires of being embedded and of breaking free by retaining the possibility of traveling between immersive territories—a key ethical concern for atmospheres in an age of screen culture.     

The chicken or the egg? building anglican churches and building congregations in a victorian london suburb

ABSTRACT

There was lively debate in the mid-Victorian Church of England as to whether it was more effective for the construction of physical church buildings to precede the formation of a new parish and congregation, or whether it was advisable instead for the human church to precede the material one. This article explores the realities on the ground through a case study of the four new churches built in the North London suburb of Finchley between the 1840s and the 1890s. Where the church before congregation strategy was modestly costed and efficiently executed, it could, as at Holy Trinity East Finchley (1846) and St. Paul's Long Lane (1886), enable the rapid growth of thriving congregations. However, at Christ Church North Finchley (1868), where the congregation came first, subsequent pastoral activity was hampered for many years by the financial demands of an unnecessarily expensive building. At All Saints Durham Road (1892), initial plans to set up a congregation in an “iron church” were frustrated due to large donations conditional on the immediate erection of a permanent church. In a context of strong competition from Nonconformity, the desire to make a strong material statement of presence in a community was understandable, but its long-term consequences for the Church's mission were ambivalent ones.     

明代建筑彩画

明代是我国历史上国力比较兴盛的时期,这个时期,大量投资兴建土木工程,形成了明代建筑的独特风格。但明代建筑彩画保留下来的却不太多,文字方面记载更是寥寥。明代建筑彩画经考查分析,基本分为两种图案形式。第一种为“金龙”彩画,此种彩画图案用金量大,在当时建筑彩画中属于高等做法。又称宫殿彩画。“金龙”彩画的次等做法就是“龙草”彩画,这种彩画一般画在皇帝敕建的庙寺建筑上。第二种“旋子彩画”,此种彩画用金量较小,图案简单,但施用范围较广,一般寺庙祠堂等建筑基本普遍应用,本文介绍其题材和做法。     

The city so prosperous: episodes of urban life in Suzhou

Views are the most direct means to re-configure the images of cities. Despite the cultural differences in nations of the occidental and oriental worlds, their painters and cartographers have had a strong inclination to illustrate cities as they once appeared. To understand Siena, the medieval town and its citizens' collective wishes, one could hardly overlook Ambrogio Lorenzetti's fresco of the images of Buon Governo and Mal Governo in its Palazzo Pubblico. Similarly, if one wants to understand the social and urban lives of Suzhou, China, in the eighteenth century, examining the scroll painting, Prosperous Suzhou , by Xu Yang, AD 1759, is most revealing. The painter of Prosperous Suzhou employed the scattered perspective technique to reconstruct the urban scenes in a continual visual itinerary. The images were structured upon a coherent naturalistic setting in which the essence of urban life was vividly depicted through the overlays of orchestrated events. Sharing some common characteristics of Lorenzetti's fresco, Prosperous Suzhou , in describing the city, however, translated the Chinese concept of layering in time and space most fluently into a flattened mental picture for the viewers. In this paper, I will focus on reading the urban scenes of Suzhou in the mid-eighteenth century from the scroll with reference to the surveyed cartographic records of the same period. At the same time, the techniques in representing these images and their relationships with the Chinese perception of space and time will be investigated. As a chain of memories captured in the views along the scroll, the urban experiences in Suzhou will be decoded and interpreted. By re-knitting these narratives, it is intended to trace the multiple layers of meanings in Panofsky's iconological terms so as to understand, then reconstruct, the urban values and intrinsic orders in the city of Suzhou.     

A Multimedia Panopticon: Media,Translation, and History in OMA's S,M,L,XL and the Arnhem Prison

This essay argues that S,M,L,XL is a digital multimedia architectural project that sought to redefine the relationship between architecture and various other media on the cusp of architectural culture's widespread digitization. It uses one design included within the text, OMA's proposed renovations for the Panoptic Prison in Arnhem, the Netherlands, to analyze how Rem Koolhaas and his firm synthesize a wide range of media to create and theorize their own conception of modern architectural history as a fantastical state of imprisonment.     

From tradition to innovation: Lewerentz's designs of ritual spaces in Sweden, 1914–1966

Sigurd Lewerentz's architectural production throughout the twentieth century set a course for subsequent developments in Sweden, and the various monographs and analyses featuring his work to date reveal his lasting influence on international architectural discourse. Reyner Banham included Lewerentz in his book The New Brutalism: Ethic or Aesthetic?. While his British Brutalist counterparts explored everyday life after the 1950s, Lewerentz's connection with popular culture was strongly tied to tradition. This paper analyses how Lewerentz's study of traditional construction methods affected his design of ritual spaces from 1914 to 1966, and explores his statements about tradition as compared with his built projects. His initial years reflect his adhesion to tradition, as a reaction to some of the existing practices in Sweden. After 1940, Lewerentz sought to reassess existing models and in his last projects referred to heritage as a basis for innovation and for interpreting traditional construction elements in novel ways. Lewerentz's shifting regard for tradition defines a novel framework in which to consider his extensive production in an all-inclusive way. His use of tradition as a resource to produce novel designs provides a lens through which to examine innovation, establishing continuity with existing designs.     

Xenia in Vitruvius' Greek house: andron, ξείνία and xenia from Homer to Augustus

Vitruvius' de Architectura uses the Latin word ‘xenia’ once, in the chapter on the Greek house, in a seemingly casual note about decorative painting. Yet the Greek homophone denotes a long-esteemed ethical principle permeating Athenian culture and Homeric legend. Greek-speaking readers of de Architectura cannot have missed the reference. Roughly translated as hospitality to strangers, the Greek xenia (ξε?ν?α) referred to both a set of ritualised practices and a socio-political disposition.

Vitruvius mentions xenia while explaining another word that also passed from Greek to Latin, ‘andron'. Once referring to a man-making leader, the word andron next referred to a men's dining room, and finally, for Vitruvius, a hallway connecting guests' apartments; it is here that Vitruvius tells us ‘this is why artists called pictures representing the things which were sent to guests “xenia”’.

Drawing together the early history of xenia and andron in Latin and Greek, and Vitruvius' opening sentence in ‘The Greek house', that Greeks did not use atria, this unique instance of xenia will be explained as a politically sensitive commentary on the Greek and Roman history of xenia, its representation and architectural expression.     

国内传统建筑彩画研究现状分析*

彩画是中国传统建筑的重要组成部分,更是一项宝贵的文化遗产。本文就我国传统建筑彩画的研究发展现状,结合数据与图表的相关统计方法,阐述了彩画研究在时间与空间上的分布,在此基础上重点叙述了彩画研究的相关具体内容,指出了研究方面存在的问题,并对我国传统建筑彩画进一步研究提出了建议。目的在于引起读者对于中国传统建筑彩画的重视,为国内彩画研究的发展做出贡献。     

Bruno Zevi,the continental European emissary of Geoffrey Scott’s theories

In the late nineteenth century, Bernard Berenson revived the analytical methodologies employed in art history by proposing new methods of pictorial analysis, such as space-composition and life-enhancement. In the twentieth century, his pupil Geoffrey Scott transferred these new methodologies from their original context, Renaissance painting, to architecture. Though Scott was a recognised critic within English aesthetic circles, he was largely ignored in Continental European academic communities. The influence of his book The Architecture of Humanism (1914) was limited to the Anglo-American world before the 1940s. This essay depicts the key role that the Italian architect Bruno Zevi played after the Second World War, by becoming the primary architectural historian to introduce and diffuse Scott’s forgotten masterpiece in many non-English-speaking countries. Zevi defended a critical methodology based on spatial, empirical, and sensory analysis of architectural works, an attitude that is observed in his theoretical corpus written immediately after his return from the United States. This paper proposes an examination of Zevi’s reception of Scott’s theories and the debates that it propagated, and aims to contribute to the understanding of the methodological approach followed in the years after the Second World War on both sides of the Atlantic.     

Digital representation methods: The case of algorithmic design

Architectural representation encompasses the means used to describe architectural entities. This discipline has long been under constant change due to architects' ever-present desire for innovation. Algorithmic design (AD) is currently making its way into the plethora of representation methods that integrate the architect's day-to-day work tools. However, it provides its fair share of controversy and hardship as it goes. This paper assesses whether AD is suitable as a representation method for architectural design by making a systematic analysis of this medium as a contemporary representation method. Specifically, we investigate (1) its birth and evolution as a means of representation, (2) the characteristics that make it simultaneously appealing and off-putting to the architectural community, (3) the influence of technological evolution and education on its proliferation, and (4) its capacity to represent design problems in comparison to the currently predominant means of digital architectural representation, that is, computer-aided drafting and building information modeling.     

Literal and notional force fields in architecture

The Philips Pavilion, design by Le Corbusier's office for the 1958 World's Fair, brought the architectural plan, the optical effects of movement and the ideology of progress into a more intense discursive relationship than virtually any project since his Purist houses of the 1920s. While the Pavilion has long been recognised as a seminal work, scholars have tended to overlook the aesthetic intentions of its chief designer, the composer Iannis Xenakis, often simplistically characterising the building as an architectural ‘translation’ of music. This paper closely examines several of Xenakis's wireframe axonometric sketches along with new diagrammatic renderings to analyse the formal disconnect between the Pavilion's plan and the experience of walking around and through it. The professional friction between its two designers yielded a new variation on the promenade architecturale; its principal tension is not between multiple formal readings but rather between the smooth exterior, whose complex form offers a continuous variation of contours, and the ‘narrative’ experience of the interior, with its multimedia account of human history.     

Developed space: Theo van Doesburg and the Chambre de Fleurs

Designed in 1925 by Theo van Doesburg, the Chambre de Fleurs is a small rectilinear interior, just 1.2 metres wide by 1.5 metres deep. But whilst modest in terms of its physical dimensions, the experience is of a volume that spills out pictorially in all directions, the diagonal patterns which line its walls extending out, away from the surface towards an imagined auxiliary space. This article looks at the way in which van Doesburg adapted the conventions of architectural drawing to exploit the potential of both geometry and painting. Using the Chambre de Fleurs as an example and considering its qualities in relation to van Doesburg's interest in geometrical figures, an attempt is made to explain how the properties of these drawings can become a productive part of spatial experience in architecture.     

READING,VOICE AND VOWEL: L PETER KOLLAR'S ARCHITECTURAL THEORY AS RHETORIC

L. Peter Kollar is best known for his proto-Platonic architectural theory and, for those who have heard him speak, for the way he delivers his concepts. Drawing upon the story of the ancient Greek maiden Phrasiklea as a rhetorical figure whose name equates with ‘famous-for-her-thoughts’, related by Jesper Svenbro in his book of the same name, Kollar's architectural theory is subjected to a structural then a rhetorical analysis. The structural analysis is tentatively proposed around his extensive use of triads, trichotomies and other multiples of three. The rhetorical analysis is proposed as a 'rhetoric of architecture' parallel with Lawrence J. Prelli's ‘rhetoric of science’, but primarily in three (!) discourses: the invented, the addressed, and the reasonable. A weak construction of architectural theory as a rhetorical practice is put forward following on from arguments offered in my book, The Theory of Architecture. Kollar's theory is proposed as a masterful, yet orthodox, weak rhetorical practice which is largely unadmitted as such. Because it claims reasonableness as the basis for its appeal and its closure, Kollar's theory leaves itself open to an interpretation that belies its claims to universality. In the largely tough-minded, pragmatic environment of architecture, Kollar is a lender-minded theorist using tough-talking to try to insinuate delicate and subtle ideas.     

Eric de Maré: between the functional and the beautiful

Eric de Maré’s photographs were very widely published in post-war Britain and his images may be seen to have influenced a generation of architects. Perhaps more than any polemic or lengthy rationale they expanded the possibilities of architectural design; his pioneering work on the photography of early industrial buildings seen in ‘The Functional Tradition’, published as an article in The Architectural Review in 1957 and subsequently as a book, helped to create a new language at a time ready for such change.

De Maré was part of the wider architectural culture of the Architectural Press and The Architectural Review, and acknowledged the influence of the long-time proprietor de Cronin Hastings as well as other contributors such as John Piper, Gordon Cullen and J.M. Richards. There are clear links with another major position in British architectural work of that period, the ‘New Brutalism': the Smithsons’ ideas of honesty of form and materials are very close to the lessons which were drawn from de Maré's photographic evidence, whilst drawing attention to the ordinary and unvalued was the common ground basic to both positions. More than this, his images of worn surfaces and ageing structures are informed by an acute architectural sensibility. De Maré's work represents a repudiation of the utopianism of Modernist practice and theory, in favour of a new kind of beauty, redemptive in the harshly utilitarian modern world.     

From the viewpoint of a client

Collaboration between choreographers and architects still usually takes the traditional form of the latter designing sets for the former, while research on the relationship between architecture and dance is scant. One of the few examples of a choreographer working with then-current architectural concerns is William Forsythe and the Ballett Frankfurt in the late 1980s, particularly in Enemy in the Figure (1989) and Limb's Theorem (1990). These pieces show a profound understanding of and engagement with architectural issues then being addressed by Daniel Libeskind. Forsythe's interest in Libeskind was not his ‘deconstruction’, as has often been asserted, but in his operations on drawing. Their coincidence of intellectual interests and resulting friendship allows us to see clearly how concerns in architecture were also explored through the medium of ballet. It is a reminder too of a period, postmodernism, when architecture led theoretical discussions.     

The Creative Gaze: Doxiadis' discovery

This research uses vision as a methodological tool in order to highlight the relationship between vision and architecture as represented through Constantinos Doxiadis' dissertation which analyses architectural space in ancient Greece using a system of visual angles. This relationship designates Doxiadis' association with a broader philosophical environment of the European between-wars era where theories concerning the aesthetic dimension of vision are at the forefront. Doxiadis' dissertation as a characteristic paradigm of early modernism brings forth a certain conceptualisation of vision as an analytical and aesthetic tool used in architectural design. Nineteenth-century architectural theory advanced vision as the most important amongst other senses. Since Choisy's concept of the picturesque at the Acropolis there is a theoretical tradition about the way the observer understands architectural space through a series of successive perspective images. Architecture always deals with phenomena. Visual representation transfers the experience of the object when the actual object is absent.     

‘WAKE/UP/AND/DREAM/FOR/THE/EIGHTIES’: Nigel Coates 1975–82

Nigel Coates graduated from Bernard Tschumi's unit at the Architectural Association in 1974, before joining him in 1977 to develop a new unit together. These were formative years for Coates, a period that shaped his architectural preoccupations for the following decades – yet they remain relatively unexplored. Between 1974 and 1977, Coates produced a number of installation and performance works with the artist Antonio Lagarto and fellow AA graduate Jenny Lowe, influenced by Tschumi's own explorations with the curator RoseLee Goldberg, and their exhibition at the Royal College of Art, A Space: A Thousand Words (1975). The works considered the potential for space to be amplified by the introduction of markers, representations of other spaces and the movement of the body. This article exposes these works for the first time, tracing the changes in Coates's thinking during this period and how it was reflected in the Unit 10 briefs that he and Tschumi developed in the period 1977–80. It chronicles Coates's pivotal trips to New York during 1980–81 to teach at Bennington College, where his exposure to a dynamic club-scene and influential new art would mark a step change in the young architect's trajectory. Charting Coates's development through his own work and his teaching at the AA, the article constructs the background from which the radical architectural group NATØ emerged in 1983.     

Architectural enclosure's effect on office worker performance: A comparison of the physical and symbolic attributes of workspace dividers

Most studies of offices examine their physical or symbolic attributes independently. Yet office components can contain both attributes. To minimize unintended but potentially negative effects on occupants, researchers must consider both the physical and symbolic attributes of components when making recommendations about their deployment. This study compares the effects of the physical and symbolic attributes of architectural enclosure on worker performance using a survey database that contains workers' ratings of their office components. The amount of enclosure is determined by the height of the occupant's workspace divider, with taller dividers offering more enclosure. Divider height is positively associated with ratings of the two physical attributes considered: speech privacy and visual privacy. Divider height, however, does not affect occupants' ratings of a home-like atmosphere or workplace pride, the symbolic attributes considered. Yet, the occupants indicate that the two symbolic attributes are more important than the two physical attributes in improving their work performance. This might lead to office design choices. An office designed to maximize worker performance might do so by maximizing its symbolic impact. This analysis suggests that an office's symbolic impact may not always be increased by including more offices with tall dividers like enclosed, private offices.