On Paradigms & Avant Garde: Peeking into the Architectural Mind

PosFAUUSP

This work discusses how ideas are constructed in the design process of architecture projects, identifying what enables their emergence, development, selection and elimination. A qualitative and exploratory research method was used. The basic assumption is that ideas are mainly the result of knowledge, although influenced by subjective factors of the designer: criticism acts as a filter of ideation, thus governing the process of selection and disposal of ideas. Theories, assumptions and arguments of other researchers on the subject of creativity were confronted with the findings presented. This revealed a pattern in the construction of ideas during architectural design processes that puts into question the theory in which ideas arise from the interaction between designers and their sketches.

Design in architecture starts by understanding dynamics of a context and by decoding the knowledge of place where the space will be created. These are then transformed into spatial concepts and end with spatial formations. Subjective knowledge that is especially enhanced by the experiences of the architect and scientific knowledge come together to lead this design process. The aim of this study is to reveal how architects from different cultures produce knowledge of space and the ways of transforming this knowledge into design process. Different architectural reflections of this knowledge are illuminated by the design proposals of architecture students from two different countries. Comparative evaluations focusing on the student works are considered as an instructive process for architects that make indiscernible discernible, vary the possibilities and by this way enhance their own architectural knowledge.

Archives for Technical Sciences, 2018

The “product” of architecture, as something that is created by the architect in a “design process”, alongwith other effective materialistic and environmental factors, depends on the worldview of the architectas the pioneer and director of the process. In fact, the architect’s definition of human being and hisaspects of existence on one hand and his needs and objectives on the other, determine “how” and “inwhat direction” the design process will proceed. It also reveals how the data intended for designing willbe gathered, and “for achieving what goals” and “meeting what needs” they are processed. The presentenquiry is an attempt to investigate how the character and characteristics of the architect’s worldviewwill affect the steps and characteristics of the design process. Therefore, first, an architectural designprocess will be established step by step, and then, the effects of the worldview on them will be studied;and consequently the components influenced by the worldview will be a...

2011

The highly formal discipline and control in the architectural profession and practice which derives from many famous architects and theorists since the 1920s such as Le Corbusier, Peter Eisenman, Frank Lloyd Wright, Aldo Rossi, and many others, have huge influences and defines the current practices and framework in most architectural education and culture. This led architects to have false perfection in the architecture design process, as they are defined and restricted to the various ideologies, yet forgetting that the current context can be completely different. This paper follows a British architect, educator, and writer, Jeremy Till's (2009) book “Architecture Depends”, in resistance to the formal practice, as he argues the concern of architecture produced by highly shaped architects that detached from the realities and overlook the contingency in architecture.

Materia Arquitectura, 2021

The term 'mainstream' or 'normative' practice is often used to describe the model of architectural practice that is often generic in its architectural ambition and tends to appeal to the economic rules of the market. This model of practice follows what can be called a 'technical-rational ideology' that prioritizes discourses of efficiency, audit, and profitable and timely delivery. This paper will highlight some moments in the history of architectural production that paved the way for the domination of the technical-rational ideology on contemporary architectural production, coming across ideas from Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand and Leslie Martin, and Design Methods that were influential in shaping mainstream architectural practice. The paper concludes with speculations on the future trajectory of the architectural profession in the light of the current prevalence of this ideology.

South African Journal of Art History, 2012

Recent theoretical debates on the sources of architectural knowledge tend to dissect architecture into a set of atomized disciplines, or else define it as a multidisciplinary matter. Such are for instance the most recent debates held by the EAAE on the issue of architectural theory between 2006 and 2010. However, as Pedro Vieira de Almeida (2005) and other theoreticians - i.e. Alexander Tzonis, Liane Lefaivre - have long claimed, architectural theory - here considered a part of architectology - has its own knowledge sources within architecture itself. Despite its lacking a clearly defined corpus which may lets us establish clear boundaries, architectural theory does not belong to science, history, social studies, philosophy or aesthetics. All these fields have their own requirements and means to articulate a universal discourse of their own, not always or often coincidental with that of architecture. Thus it seems easier to define what architectural knowledge is not than to establis...

Towards Understanding Visual Styles As Inventions Without Expiration Dates: How the View of Architectural History as Permanent Presence Might Contribute to Reforming Education of Architects and Designers. ---->>> By Jan MICHL / ABSTRACT: ---->>> The main thesis of the article is that there are good reasons for seeing the pre-modernist architectural and design idioms as still valid and feasible visual inventions, in contrast to the modernist view that has considered them as stone-dead expressions of past historical periods. The thesis is backed up by philosophical arguments developed by the late British philosopher Karl Popper. ---->>> The article’s first half discusses the central aspects of the modernist theory of architecture, mainly from the perspective of Popper’s critique of what he called “historicism”, i.e. the belief that the course of history is set and that some people are able to discern its direction and therefore act in a historically correct manner. The present author sees modernism as an approach to architecture based on such a belief, and he criticizes the modernist theory as a train of arguments aimed at promoting a special, beyond-fashion standing of the new modernist idiom, as well as of the modernists themselves. ---->>> In its second half, the article juxtaposes the dismissive modernist attitude towards the past architectural idoms with Karl Popper’s epoch-making claim about the existence of what he called “objective knowledge”. This knowledge Popper describes as knowledge without a knowing subject, a kind of knowledge that exists independently of any person, in a realm of its own, and accessible to everybody. An example of such objective knowledge can be the library of books, containing existing theories, hypotheses, discussions, problems and solutions. Here, according to Popper, belongs also the world of knowledge contained in the existing works of art, including architecture and design. ----->>> In the present author’s opinion, Popper’s claim about the existence of objective knowledge throws a novel light on the problem of creativity in general, and with it also on the modernist attitude towards the past. Popper sees human creativity in any area as an activity fully anchored in the objective world of already existing knowledge, and as impossible without such anchorage. This view is pithily summarized in Popper’s remark, that “…if anybody were to start where Adam started, he would not get further than Adam did …”. ----->>> According to the present author, the key feature of the world of objective knowledge is that every single entity belonging to it exists in the present, in parallel with all other entities. The world of objective knowledge is therefore a permanently present world. It is accessible to, and adoptable by, anybody who has an interest in making its content into his own. Being accessible and public, this world is at the same time criticizable and this criticizability is what makes its further creative developments possible. The claim about the objective existence of knowledge then implies that all works of art, including architecture, although diachronic in their origin, exist in a synchronic dimension, in a permanent presence. In the world of objective knowledge, there is therefore no difference between “architecture of the past” and “architecture of the present”, as both exist in the same temporal dimension, i.e. right now. ---->>> If we accept the claim that there is a world of objective knowledge, and that this world is a foundation of human creativity, it will be obvious that the modernist architects did not, and could not, start from zero, simply because it is unfeasible. Modernists all the time operated within the world of existing aesthetic solutions, existing theories, and existing problems, without temporal borders, that is, just as any other kind of creative enterprise in the past. The modernist assertion, that architectural idioms of the pre-Bauhaus past are not to be re-used in the present, because they are visual expressions of no longer existing past conditions, is then seen as hardly more than a way of denigrating the customary revivalist approach to architecture, in order to secure the status of historical necessity for the innovative modernist idiom. Such attitude to the pre-modernist architecture necessarily collided with how the people, who never shared the modernist objectives, i.e. the majority of the public, perceive the architecture and design of the pre-Bauhaus past. ---->>> The present author concludes that there are no reasonable arguments for why the contemporary schools of architecture and design should keep limiting the education of future architects and designers to the modernist visual idiom alone, as they have been doing since the 1950s.

The Public Value of the Humanities

Architecture is, like all areas of the arts and humanities, a complex affair, and involves a very wide range of people and personalities, ideas and philosophies, theories and actions. But, more than any other artistic endeavour, architecture is also an inherently interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary practice, and is inextricably linked to our everyday world of business, work, leisure, health, environment and social life. We can do almost nothing in our lives without encountering architecture, whether as offices, housing, hotels, sports facilities, hospitals, train and bus stations, or architecture in drawings, fi lms and video-games, or architecture as part of the hidden world of communications and virtual technologies. For this reason, the UK's research into architecture must-and does-deal with a wide spectrum of concerns, all of which have the potential to impact directly on our lives today. Architecture and architects Architecture is perhaps most often thought of as being the product of architects-that is as the product of a single person or of small groups of people, and of their thoughts, designs and actions. One of the most important areas of architectural research is, therefore, into who these fi gures were in the past, and who they are now and in the future. Who is 'the architect' and what does he, she or they do? (Saint Andrew 1993; Hughes 1996; Kostof 1987). There are, of course, many important architects in the UK who have made a major contribution to our society and cities. From Christopher Wren in the seventeenth century and John Soane in the eighteenth century through to Zaha Hadid and Norman Foster today, architects have used their considerable artistic imagination, technical innovation and entrepreneurship to produce some of the most signifi cant and lasting constructions in the contemporary world. These are important fi gures to understand, not only in terms of themselves but also in terms of how their ideas and designs have reached out far beyond their own buildings and have had a pervasive infl uence throughout the world of art, design and the creative industries. Much of what we see and understand as 'architecture' in the world today is because of a relatively few number of architectural designers and thinkers, and, as a result, we need to record and explore this important historical and cultural legacy. The more detailed results of this research are, however, frequently quite surprising, for they tell us that 'the architect' is, very often, not a single kind of person at all. Such research reveals, instead, that an architect might be a builder, a developer or a technician, or that an architect might be an artist,