May 11, '08 3:16 PM

Theory of Architecture
for everyone

THEORY OF DESIGN
Instructor: Architect Jose Juson

• Research of Architecture

- Research contributes to Design Theory

• Nature of Design Theory

- Design Theory states facts

- Design Theory aids design

• Scope of Architecture Theory

- Includes all that is presented in the handbooks of architects

- Includes legislation, norms and standards, rules and methods

- Includes miscellaneous and “unscientific” elements

• Why Design Theory?

- To aid the work of the architect and improve its product

- Proven theory helps designers do work better and more efficiently

- “Skill without knowledge is nothing”

(architect Jean Mignot, 1400 AD)

• Understanding Design Theory

- Theory does NOT necessarily mean PRECCED design

- PARADISM : every new or established theory applied

: STYLE
 THEMATIC THEORIES

• CLASSICAL

- Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

• MIDDLE AGES

- Medieval (read: Dark Age) anonymous tradition of trade guilds

• RENAISSANCE

- Alberti, Vignola, Palladio, etc.

• STRUCTURALIST

- Galileo Galilei, Robert Hooke, etc.

• ART NOUVEAU (Personal Style)

- Eugene Emmanuelle Violett-le-Due, Le Corbusier, etc.

• FUNCTIONALISM

- Walter Gropius, Louis Sullivan, etc.

 - modern architecture

• POSTMODERNISM

- Robert Venturi

• SYMBOLIC ARCHITECTURE
• ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

 CLASSICAL THEORIES

• Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

- Author of the oldest research on architecture

- Wrote an extensive summary of all the theory on construction

- Had a thorough knowledge of earlier Greek and Roman writings

• “Ten Books on Architecture”

- De architectura libri decem

- Consists mostly of normative theory of design (based on practice)

- A collection of thematic theories of design with no method of combining them into a synthesis

- Presents a classification of requirements set for buildings:

: DURABILTIY (firmitas)

: PRACTICALITY or “convenience”

(utilitas)

: PLEASANTNESS (venustas)

• Vitruvian Rules of Aesthetic Form

- Based on Greek traditions of architecture

- Teachings of Pythagoras : applying proportions of numbers

- Observations of tuned string of instruments

- Proportions of human body

 - PLEASANTNESS : in accordance of good taste

: parts follow proportions

: symmetry of measures

 THEORIES in the MIDDLE AGES

- no documents

- no person can be attributed for theories

• Monastery Institutions

- Most documents retrieved from the Middle Ages

- However, archives contain only few descriptions of buildings

- Described only as “according to the traditional model”

- “There’s no accounting for tastes” was the rule of thumb

• Development of Building Style

- With hardly or no literary research present

- Villard de Hannecourt’s “sketchbook” in 1235

- Rotzer’s Booklet on the right way of making pinnacles

- Only through guidance of old masters

- Tradition binding and precise in close guilds of builders

 RENNAISANCE THEORIES

• 1948 – a copy of Virtue manuscript found at St. Gallen Monastery

• Leon Bautista Alberti (1404-72)

- Person in charge of constructions commanded by Pope

 - “On Building” : De re aedifficatoria

: one of the greatest works of the theory of

architecture

: completed in 1452, published in 1485

: more emphasis on decoration of building

exteriors

• Sebastino Serlio

- “Regole generall di architectura”

• Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola

- “Regola delle cinque ordini”

- Concise, facts and easily applicable rules of the five column systems

- Based his design instructions on four things:

: idea of Pythagoras

: proportions of small number

: properties and other instruments

: good taste

• Andrea Palladio (1508-80)

- “I Quattro libri dell’architectura”

- The father of modern picture books of architecture

• Philibert de L’orme

- One of French theorist who are critical of italians

- Prove that Pantheon’s Corinthian columns had 3 different proportions

- Rejected the doctrine of absolute beauty of measures

 CONSTRUCTION THEORY
Building Material Architectural Form
Amorphic material: Spherical vaulted
construction
Soft stone; snow
Sheets of skin or textile Cone-shaped tent
construction
Logs of wood Box-shaped construction

• Before Written Construction Theory

- Architecture created without the help of architects or theory

- Builders used a model instead of mathematical algorithms now used in modern construction

- Inverted “catenary” model

• Semi-Circular Vault : Theory by Virtue

“ When there are arches… the outermost piers must be made broader than the others so that they
may have the strength to resist when the wedges under the pressure of the load of the walls, begins to thrust
to the abutments.”

• During Middle Ages

- No written documents survived about theories or models to describe the magnificent vaults of
medieval cathedrals

• During Renaissance

- From Alberti onwards, architects began specializing

- Mathematical models by Francis Bacon and Galileo Galilei

: considers load and scientific studies

contributed to constructions

- 1675 : Marquis de Vauban founded a building depatment in the French army called “ Corps
des Ingenieurs”

- 1747 : Ecole des Ponts et Chaussees, special school founded in Paris where new profession
specializing in construction was organized.

--- first engineering school

- Other figures of mathematical construction theory

 : Robert Hooke

: Jakob Bernoulli

: Leonard Euier

 PERSONAL STYLE

• Copying from Antiquity

- Architecture form antiquity came to a print of perfection

- Eugene Viollet-le-Duc (1863)

: the first theorist who set out to create a totally new system of architectural forms independent of antiquity

“What we call taste is but an involuntary process of reasoning whose steps elude our observation.
Authority has no value if its grounds are not explained.”

: the foundation of modern

architecture

: did not create a timeless architectural style himself, he showed others the philosophical
foundation and method that they could use to develop even radically new form language

- Owen Jones : used forms inspired from nature, especially plants

 ART NOUVEAU

- The first architectural style independent of the tradition of antiquity after the Gothic style

- The example set by Art Nouveau encourage some of the most skillful architects of the 20th
century to create their private form language

THEORETICAL TREATISES
 - Five points of Architecture (1926, Le Corbusier)

a. pilotis

b. free plan

c. free façade

d. the long horizontal sliding window

e. the roof garden

- Architecture as Space (Bruno Zeri)

“The crux of architecture is not the sculptural pattern, but instead the building interiors. These
can be seen as “negative solids”, as voids which the artist divides, combines, repeats and
emphasizes in the same way as the sculptor treats his “positive” lumps of substance.”

- The “personal style” of architects are not necessarily based on laws of nature or on logical
reasoning. More important is that they exhibit a coherent application of an idea which also must
be clear that the public can find it out. An advantage is also if the style includes symbolical
undertones.

 MODERN ARCHITECTURE

• Industrial Revolution (1768)

- Arts and Crafts Movement

a. conservative

b. William Morris

c. John Rustrin

- Electicism

a. architecture of borrowing

• Fruits of Industrial Revolution

 Joseph Paxton – Crystal Palace, 1851

Elisha Graves Otis – Elevator, 1857

Manufacturing of “Rolled Steel”

1870’s

• The Great Fire of Chicago, 1871

- downtown in Chicago was burned and in needs of construction of new buildings

- place where first tallest building was constructed

• William Le Baron Jenney

- made the first skyscraper

• Daniel Burnham

- “make no little plans, they have no magic to stir man’s blood”

• Louis Sullivan

- “form follows function”

1880’s

- Chicago School became the concentration of architectural development

- introduce Chicago Window

1890’s

• The World Columbian Exposition

- built in 1863

- chief architect: Daniel Burnham and Frederick Law Olmsted

1900’s

- European architecture was notified

- Person to notify:

a. Otto Wagner

b. Adolf Loops “ornament is a crime”

c. H.P. Berlage

d. Frank Llyod Wright

1910’s

- Office of Peter Behrens

a. Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe “less in more”

b. Walter Gropius

c. Le Corbusier

- 2 Art movements that influenced

1. Futurism – simultaneity of movement

2. Cubism – interpretation of space

1920’s

• The Bauhaus

- “Art and Technology, the new unity”

• Established architects

a. Frank Llyod Wright “organic architecture”

b. Le Corbusier

c. Mies Van Der Rohe / Gropius

1930’s

• International Style
 1950’s

• The period of Reassessment

- Universalism

- Personalism

 POSTMODERNISM

• The center of Postmodernism:

Robert Venturi “less is bore”

• Philip Johnson

- say that a portion of Chippendale building in New York has no function

• Introduce the element of “Discovery”

 SYMBOLIC ARHITECTURE

- “Building as a message”

1. Mathematical Analogy

2. Biological Analogy

- use of plants and ornaments

3. Romantic Architecture

- uses exotic language of form

- vastness; trying to surprise; huge

4. Linguistic Analogies

- grammar; uses words with proper grammar

5. Mechanical Analogies

- Buckminter Fuller
6. Ad Hoc Analogy

- any materials that you can get or available in your environment such as wood in forest

7. Stage Analogy