Nikos A.

Salingaros: Architectural Theory

11/3/15, 7:22 PM

Unified Architectural Theory, a course by

Nikos A. Salingaros.
The book arising out of this course is "Unified Architectural Theory: Form, Language,
Complexity", US edition, Sustasis Foundation, 2013 HERE International edition, Vajra
Publications HERE. To facilitate students around the world, chapters are offered free online in
English, Portuguese, Spanish, and Urdu HERE. This is a companion to Christopher
Alexander's "The Phenomenon of Life: The Nature of Order, Book 1". My revised and updated
lecture notes are included in the book together with all of the class readings (but excluding the
chapters from our two texts). It also includes a decription of our two projects and the model for
computing architectural Life and Regionalism. Download the FLYER.
ARCHITECTURE & THOUGHT: ARCHITECTURAL THEORY, ARC 3433/6973,
UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT SAN ANTONIO, FALL SEMESTER 2012
All the sections listed below in the syllabus are contained in the textbook: links are given where
those are available online. Original material from this course is covered by Creative Commons
License AttributionShareAlike, CC BY-SA Nikos A. Salingaros, 2012.

TEXTS:
Christopher Alexander, The Nature of Order: An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of
the Universe, Book 1 -- The Phenomenon of Life [Hardcover] (Center for Environmental
Structure, 2001). ISBN-10: 0972652914.
Nikos A. Salingaros, A Theory of Architecture [Paperback] (Umbau-Verlag, 2007). ISBN-10:
3937954074. New printing with Index, 2014 HERE and HERE. Also available in Chinese and in
Persian.
By the end of the semester, students will be expected to have read and absorbed all of
Alexander's book, and Chapters 1 to 7 & 11 of my book (those are directly relevant to The
Nature of Order).
All other readings are either available freely on the Web, or are provided to the students in pdf
form. I plan to put up my lecture notes online.

SYLLABUS: We covered approximately one section per week.

INTRODUCTION.
LECTURE NOTES WEEK 1.
1. The structure of a scientific theory. Requirements for a mode of thought to be a theory for
architecture. Discourses and modes of thought that are not theories.
Readings: Alexander, Prologue & Chapter 1. Salingaros, "Architectural Theory" extracts from
AAAD (also in Chinese, French, Italian, and Russian). E. O. Wilson, "Integrated Science and the
Coming Century of the Environment", Science, Volume 279, No. 5359 (March 27 1998), pages
2048-2049.
LECTURE NOTES WEEK 2.
2. Form Languages. Vocabulary of forms and tectonics, and their combinatorial properties.
Richness of a form language, and measures of its complexity.
Readings: Alexander, Chapter 2. Alexander, sampler from "A Pattern Language". Salingaros,
Chapter 11.
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LECTURE NOTES WEEK 3.

3. Different examples of Form Languages. Classical, historical, regional, etc. Industrial-era form
languages. Form languages of famous architects. Three Laws of Structural Order.
Readings: Salingaros, Chapter 1 (also in Spanish). Salingaros, "Kolmogorov-Chaitin
Complexity". Salingaros & Masden, "Against Ecophobia".
Begin first project: Each student will choose and document one particular form
language, will then design an example using that form language, and will present it
in class. Please download the "Form Language Checklist" as a guide. We will draw
lots to give the order of choice for each student, so that each student covers a
different form language.
LECTURE NOTES WEEK 4.
4. Comparison among different form languages. Degree of complexity as a measure of their
adaptivity. Regionalism as adaptation to locality. Regional versus global: a practical dimension
for classifying form languages. Philosophical justifications for form languages.
Readings: Alexander, Chapter 7. Leon Krier, "Building Civil Cities". Salingaros & Masden,
"Politics, Philosophy, Critical Theory".
Continue first project: Students will present their form language and their building
designed using it, in class. Compute the Kolmogorov-Chaitin complexity of your
form language by using the word count of your completed checklist. Also estimate
the regional adaptation on a scale of 0 to 10 (higher for better adaptation). The
class will then plot these values together in a scatter plot to look for any correlation.
LECTURE NOTES WEEK 5.
5. Adaptivity of a form language to human life. Human physiology and psychology. A direct and
useful test: Alexander's 'Mirror of the Self'. Evidence-based design.
Readings: Alexander, Chapters 8 & 9. Mehaffy & Salingaros, "Evidence-Based Design".
LECTURE NOTES WEEK 6.
6. Biophilia: our evolved kinship to the structure of biological forms. The nourishment human
beings experience from natural forms. Hospital design and healing environments.
Readings: Alexander, Chapter 10. Mehaffy & Salingaros, "Biophilia". Salingaros & Masden,
extract from pages 61-70 of "Neuroscience, the Natural Environment, and Building Design",
which is Chapter 5 of: Biophilic Design: the Theory, Science and Practice of Bringing Buildings
to Life, edited by Stephen R. Kellert, Judith Heerwagen, and Martin Mador (John Wiley, New
York, 2008), pages 59-83.
LECTURE NOTES WEEK 7.
7. Geometrical basis for natural forms. Alexander's 15 Fundamental Properties, and how they
lead to the phenomenon of life.
Readings: Alexander, Chapter 5.
LECTURE NOTES WEEK 8.
8. Scientific background for the Fifteen Fundamental Properties. Fractals and hierarchical
scaling. The logarithmic constant as average scaling ratio.
Readings: Alexander, Chapter 6. Salingaros, Chapters 2 & 3.
LECTURE NOTES WEEK 9.
9. Organized complexity. A model to estimate life in architecture. Computation of architectural
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temperature and architectural harmony. Experiments that correlate the theoretical predictions
with perceived degree of life in buildings.
Readings: Alexander, Appendix 6. Salingaros, Chapter 5.
LECTURE NOTES WEEK 10.
10. Adaptive recursion as a means of achieving geometrical coherence. The field of centers and
wholeness. Complex adaptive systems as transformations.
Readings: Alexander, Chapters 3 & 4 and Appendix 3. Mehaffy & Salingaros, "Science for
Designers: The Transformation of Wholes".
Begin second project: "Quantitative Measures for Regionalism and Complexity".
The class will undertake a classification of different form languages according to
their natural/unnatural and regional/global characteristics. Please download the
"Project-Classification" description.
LECTURE NOTES WEEK 11.
11. Recursion and fractals. Different scales in a design, and how they are connected to each
other. How fractals reduce stress.
Readings: Mehaffy & Salingaros, "Scaling and Fractals". Salingaros, Chapters 6 & 7. R. P.
Taylor, "Reduction of Physiological Stress Using Fractal Art and Architecture", Leonardo,
Volume 39, No. 3 (June 2006), pages 245-251.
Continue second project: Students will evaluate their form language for general use,
and present their analysis in class. Compute the architectural temperature T and
architectural harmony H , to obtain another ordered pair of values (T, H) for each
form language. We will plot these points in one graph for the entire class, and look
for correlations.
LECTURE NOTES WEEK 12.
12. Theory of Ornament. Ornament and human intelligence. A model of stress in minimalist
environments based on the analogy with human pathologies.
Readings: Alexander, Chapter 11. Mehaffy and Salingaros, "Intelligence and the Information
Environment". Salingaros, Chapter 4.
LECTURE NOTES WEEK 13.
13. Architecture itself as a biological system. Organizational lessons from biology and robotics
we can apply to design.
Readings: Mehaffy & Salingaros, "Complex Adaptive Systems". Salingaros & Masden,
"Architecture: Biological Form and Artificial Intelligence".
LECTURE NOTES WEEK 14.
14. Classification of Form Languages: natural languages and unnatural languages. Different
conceptions of what architecture is, and what direction it should evolve towards.
Readings: Alexander, Conclusion. The 1982 Alexander-Eisenman Debate. Alexander, "Some
Sober Reflections on the Nature of Architecture in Our Time", Katarxis No. 3, September 2004.
END OF COURSE.

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